“I’ll murder you.”
“I’m serious!”
“I’m not?”
“Robbie. You really don’t understand!” I took a deep breath. “Dear. Robbie. I am aware of what’s eating you. I realize it is not considered cricket in your dizzy set — in which at the moment I include all women — for a man to race wildly over the sand immediately after—”
“What do I care? I really couldn’t care less. I really couldn’t. Take me home.”
I grabbed her shoulders, looked into her face. “I have a surprise for you. There is a dead guy lying down the beach a ways. His head is all crashed in, and most unbeautiful. That’s why I went tripping away, dear heart. I saw a tall cat fling him off the cliff.”
Apparently she hadn’t seen anything except me whooping along the tidemarks, running like a coward. Coward — little did she know.
“Of course,” she said. “There’s a massacre. Custer is down there—”
I grabbed her hand and yanked her after me. In arguments with women there comes a time when words are useless and positive action is indicated. I hauled her after me, her feet dragging and kicking, and she rattled a great deal of popcorn-popping Spanish at me, a language she used when at a temperature which would split clinical thermometers. She didn’t even see the dead man until we were almost on top of him.
Then I stopped, turned her around, and pointed. “There, lamebrain. I was telling you the complete truth. I did see a guy fling him off—”
I won that argument. She fainted.
2.
Night fell softly as we drove back toward Los Angeles. The police had been notified, the body trundled away, and Robbie and I had that behind us now, the evening ahead.
She had forgiven me. Not all at once, but unreservedly at last. Now she was snuggled close to me on the seat, hanging onto my arm. The top was down on my Cadillac, and a spiced breeze washed around us.
We had been discussing the afternoon, and now she asked me a question she hadn’t asked before. “Shell, the man who pushed the other one off the cliff. What did he look like?”
“Why, he was... I don’t know. I was so busy trying to get the film of him, and then dodging bullets, I never did really get a look at him.” I considered the sad fact. “I haven’t the faintest idea what he looks like. And I don’t have the film now, either.”
“How will they catch him?”
“Part of it could depend on how soon they identify the body. There were no papers on him, no clue yet to who he was. Once they figure out who had a motive to kill him, the field might narrow down. Right now it’s wide open.”
“Maybe he’ll even get away with it.”
I snarled silently, glaring ahead. “Not if I... have anything... to say about it.” I was remembering what he had interrupted back there on the beach. Of all times for an ape to start sailing bodies around. And that slug in my camera had not only ruined the shots of him, but of Robbie. “I will... tear him... limb from limb,” I growled. “I will beat one half of him to death... with the other half of him.”
She purred softly, snuggled closer, and hugged my arm.
I discovered I was halfway into the left lane, driving along with a sappy smile on my face. I pulled over where I belonged. Once again I had been remembering Robbie standing on the beach, blue sea behind her — just before that other body went flying through the air. I’d gotten one look, but only one, and oh, so brief, of her standing there, pink pants in her hand. Maybe in the space of a few seconds then I had been subjected to so many sensational sensations and brain-twisting sights that it had blown a neuronic fuse in my nervous system — but something new had indeed been added.
Robbie was — and for that one super-stimulating half-second there on the sun-warmed beach had been — so absolutely stunning that now it was as though a small perfect replica of her had been heated to a white-hot sizzle and used to brand my brain. It stayed up there, about the fourth convolution over, glowing and letting off pretty sparks. It was a new experience in many ways. I could merely close my eyes and see us up there, sparking. Or, rather, see her up there. I shook my head, trying to organize my striking thoughts. But they remained disorganized.
Robbie didn’t speak again until we were on North Rossmore in Hollywood, almost to the Spartan Apartment Hotel, where I live. And where we were going. Then she said: “I was just thinking about that man, Shell. You don’t know what he looks like. But I wonder if he got a good look at you?”
I hadn’t carefully considered that angle. I pulled over to the curb, parked across the street from the Spartan. “That’s a good question,” I said.
I took the keys from the ignition, opened the car door, and stepped into the dimly-lighted street. “A disturbing question, Robbie. Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer.”
I started around to open the door on her side — and blam-blam, two quick shots, one after the other. The first one got me. It spun me to my left, banged me against the car, knocked me off balance. I fell awkwardly, turning, thudded down on my right shoulder, and rolled onto my back.
I came up again fast, yanking the .38 from under my coat, bent forward in a crouch. I didn’t even know where the shots had come from. But then I heard the slap of fast-pounding feet, a short silence, then the roar of a car’s engine, the scrape of tires sliding on asphalt.
I jumped toward the Cad, then remembered I’d had the keys in my hand. I’d dropped them, they were somewhere here in the street. I found them, but by then the guy was at least a mile away.
I swore softly, then felt over my chest and arm, near where that slug had smacked me. I didn’t know how badly I’d been hit; you seldom do for a while. But then I found the spot. The bullet had passed between my holstered gun and side, gouging out a cubic inch or two of skin and flesh. Nothing serious. My holster had taken most of the blow; that had really been what spun me around. My gun seemed all right, but the holster was ruined. Fine; that was better than me being ruined.
Robbie’s head appeared in the window on my side.
“She-ell,” she said shakily.
“It’s okay, honey. Everything’s all right. Except that sonofa — he got away.” I paused, hauled in a couple of deep breaths. “Incidentally, Robbie. That question you just asked me. Now I can answer it.”
“What... what’ll we do?”
“We’ll go up to my apartment, and have a tall, cool, potent drink.”
We did. I unlocked the door of my apartment, pointed out the tanks of tropical fish for Robbie, ignored Amelia — Robbie would inevitably lamp that yard-square nude painting I found in a pawnshop, and cherish — and showed her where the booze and ice were in the kitchenette.
“Fix us something exciting,” I said, then went into the bathroom, peeled off my coat and shirt.
The slug had chewed me up a bit, and the wound was beginning to feel unpleasant, but it wasn’t bad. Just bloody. There was quite a lot of blood.
I dunked a washrag in warm water, and right then Robbie said from behind me: “Try this.”
I turned around. She had two tall glasses in her hands. Then her eyes dropped to the side of my chest and her mouth stretched wide as if she were going to scream, though no sound came out.
Finally she said: “You’re bleeding! Shell, you’re bleeding!”
“Don’t get excited. It’s nothing to—”
“But you’re shot! You’re in pain!”
“It’s... only a little shooting pain.”
“I’ll call an ambulance.”