Terror's Cradle

He glanced along the bar and came straight over. 'You Sellers?'

`Yes.'

`Dave Spinetti.' He didn't offer to shake hands.

`Drink?'

`Coke.'

I ordered. Drinks are easier to order and delivered faster in Las Vegas than anywhere else on earth.

He beat about no bushes. 'How much you paying?'

I shook my head. 'Fixed in London. My paper and her agent. All agreed. I'm just here to talk to her.'

The corners of his mouth turned down. 'You and a million more.'

I said, 'But.'

`Yeah, I know.' He didn't like it. This time his palm wasn't to be crossed with gold. The deal had been done. There were no big percentages to be played. Perhaps he'd find a few scrapings, but they'd be small.

I said, 'Tell me about it.'

`You've seen the afternoon papers?'

I nodded. 'Very bald. Very careful. Very uninformative. What happened?'

He took a pull at his Coke, almost as though it were whisky. No thirst there — just the need for a crutch. 'When she woke up there was this dead guy in her bathroom. That's all there is.'

I said, 'With a bullet through his head and she didn't hear the shot.'

He nodded grimly. 'Right.'

Ànd she didn't know him?'

`Yeah. She didn't know him.'

`There can't be many like that.'

`Like what?'

`Men she didn't know. Four hundred million Chinese, perhaps. A few Russians and Albanians.'

`Cut that out!'

`Who was he?'

Spinetti shrugged. 'Who knows? His name was Bruzzi.' `Where from?'

`Vegas.'

Ànd the gentleman's occupation?'

`Bartender.'

The picture wasn't even remotely fuzzy. I said, 'She was high. Drugs or alcohol?'

He shrugged again. Smooth creases slid about the beautiful knitwear jacket as his shoulders moved. 'You won't print it.'

Preserve the public's illusions. Miss Rhodes, tired -and sleeping soundly, didn't hear .. . I said, 'The only question is, who actually shot him?' Spinetti grimaced. 'That's what the sheriff's office is asking.'

`Romantic quarrel over beauteous actress,'. I said. 'Crime passionel. Between a bartender and a gunman. And ten feet away, on the other side of a plasterboard wall, she's overtired as a newt and hears nothing.'

`You've got the picture.' His voice was suddenly a little weary.

`You've had a hard day,' I said. 'Relax. Have a real drink.' `Just Coke.' Confirmation: reformed alcoholic and it still hurt.

`Has she talked to the sheriff's office?'

`Not yet.'

I said, 'But you moved quickly.'

`Sure I moved fast. She was in a state of collapse. The doctor wouldn't –'

`That would be `the film unit doctor?'

`Yeah.'

Ànd how long does the tame doctor say it will be?'

"Coupla days.'

Èxcellent,' I said.

Èxcellent it's not, bud.'

I said, 'All publicity's good publicity. Remember Cleopatra. Don't worry about it. Meanwhile she's where?'

`Staying with friends.'

`Well, she always had plenty of those. New friends wherever she goes. Some nicer than others, but not much. Do I see her tonight?'

Spinetti shook his head. 'Tomorrow.'

Ìn Las Vegas?'

`No. Not in Nevada'

Àrizona or California?'

He'd had enough. 'I'll call you tomorrow. Early. Where are you staying?'

`The Dime Palace.'

Above the mirror lenses his eyebrows lifted. 'A motel?' I said, 'Pounds convert into dollars in a most unfavourable way. Legacy of war, and things.'

`Yeah. Call you tomorrow.' He turned and walked away. He was stuck with the mucky end of this stick, and I didn't feel sorry for him.

The Dime Palace wasn't quite as cheap and nasty as it sounds. Las Vegas, and the people who run it, take a simple attitude to visitors : they encourage them, tempt and flatter them, house them comfortably, feed them well and cheaply — and concentrate on removing their money at the gaming tables. So the Dime Palace was a twenty-dollar motel and charged ten. Included in the ten was a free drink and a free meal and the pool and the rest, plus a colour TV set in the room and free local phone calls. I've stayed in places, in Paris and Stockholm for instance, and in Russia, that gave a quarter the value and charged four times as much.

I was back there, about half-past ten, taking off my tie and adjusting the air-conditioning, when the phone rang. I stared at the instrument for a puzzled moment, wondering who the hell was ringing me. Then I picked it up.

`John Sellers?'

`Speaking.'

`Message for you, bud. Leave Vegas. Don't come back.' `Who — ?'

`You hear what I said?'

Ì heard. You've got a wrong number, I think' `Just go, Sellers. Go now.'

Then he hung up. After a stupefied moment I realized I was still holding the phone, so I replaced it and lay back on the bed, thinking. Very few people knew I was in Las Vegas: Alex Scown was one, and not only had he sent me in the first place, he'd go off like fulminate if I left without the interview with Susannah. Then there was Spinetti, to whom I'd given my number of long before. But the caller hadn't been Spinetti. Some friend of Spinetti's? I grinned suddenly, imagining the conversation, the delicate little plot. Get Sellers out and you get the London Daily News out, too. Once they're out, the story's yours for two thousand bucks. Hell, Charlie, you can even pretend to be Sellers. Fifteen hundred. Two thousand I said, Charlie, and that's cheap. Okay? Okay. I switched on the TV set to look for a newscast, and when I found it, Scown's editorial judgment was neatly confirmed. I had to wait for item nine, newscaster's head and shoulders only, for the senate inquiry. But item one had been Susannah. They'd had the county sheriff, niggled that he hadn't seen Miss Rhodes, but By God he would, yessir, '

cause when it came to justice in this here county, movie stars weren't no different to nobody else, and she'd better show for the coroner, collapse or no collapse.' Patently neither the sheriff nor anyone else had the faintest idea where she was. I picked up the phone, dialled Western Union and dictated a cable to London to let Scown know that things were set for morning then opened my bag to get out pyjamas and shaving case. No shaving case. A thing isn't lost when you know where it is and I knew exactly where the shaving case was. It was in the bathroom of my Washington hotel room. I swore. There'd be no cleaning of teeth tonight; no morning shave; and worse, my new electric razor was' in the damned thing, the one Alsa had given me to replace the one I had left in Russia.

Ì want a call to Washington,' I said into the phone, 'The Drake Hotel.' You can do things like that in America. In Britain you spend half an hour waiting for Inquiries to answer because you have to have the number. Anyway, they told me the razor had been found and they'd send it on to London. Nice of them. Our pleasure, sir, and there was a call for you after you checked out.

' I listened as he told me the call had come in from Gothenburg, Sweden, at 3 p.m. Washington time. From a Miss Alison Hay. They'd told her I'd gone, but she'd left a message just in case. Would I call her back and the matter was urgent. He gave me the number she'd left.

I hung up and looked at my watch. It would now be four in the morning in Gothenburg, I calculated, and urgent or not, a barbaric hour to telephone her. As it happened, I got the arithmetic wrong; by that time it was seven o'clock in the Swedish morning. Not that it would have made any difference .. .

CHAPTER TWO

When Spinetti telephoned I was still asleep. I came to reluctantly and stretched out a dopey arm to pick up the receiver. He said, 'Be out front in ten minutes.