Somehow the droning voice made sense. His mind, charged now to frenzied activity, raced back over the words, picked them up and went over them again. There was something here now that shouldn’t be at all. Something terrible if he heard right. The smile seemed frozen on his face now and for the first time his eyes made a little rat’s movement around the room.
“I hired you to kill me,” Riley said. “I never knew who you were or where you were and I finally figured out the only way to have you in front of me so you could die where I can see it happen without any heat coming my way at all.”
Rudolph’s voice was strained. “You can’t!”
“I have, pal, I have. But first let me tell you thanks. I have a nice straight business going for me and there won’t be any heat. In fact, I’ll be a hero. How about that.”
He felt cold. He had never felt so cold as now. There was no spit in his mouth and his insides were rolling. Had he eaten earlier he was sure he would have vomited at that moment. For some reason he could hear the voices of Cindy and Lulu and Francie and Joan and all those others and far away mocking him with a Cuban accent the untasted one he hungered after, and somewhere from a deep invisible fog came the scared bleatings of the ones he would have had by cajolery or by force if necessary.
Would have had! Not at all! Not at all, Mr. Riley. “You forgot something, Mr. Riley,” Rudolph said, bringing the Browning into line with his chest. “I have the gun.”
“And I have one in this box under my hand, friend. A big fat .45 automatic for which I have a license.”
Rudolph nodded sagely. “The moment you move your hand toward it I’ll shoot you,” he said softly.
“Fair enough,” Riley said.
Rudolph was on his feet. What was the matter with this man? Was he mad! Then his hand moved and Rudolph pulled the trigger. The Browning jumped once... twice... three times... four... he could see the shots hitting his chest right in the heart area. Go down, damn you, go down! He had to go down. The big guy had the .45 out of the box when Rudolph Less pulled the trigger on the last shot and saw it rip into his arm, but it was the wrong arm. The other one had the .45.
And he was grinning, damn him!
He looked at the blood pumping from his arm. “This makes it all the better,” he said, then laughed again and ripped open his shirt.
With mouth agape, Rudolph saw the overlapping plates of the bulletproof vest. Riley brought the gun up and pointed it at his head.
Rudolph was old looking now, sallow, his cheeks sunken in fear. His invincibility shattered for no reason, no reason at all. All those wonderful pleasures gone, gone, because this big fool in front of him had tricked him. Where had he made his mistake? It had to be somewhere. Where then?
He said, “Why?” His voice was weak, faltering.
Riley lifted a hand to his ear and felt for the piece of cosmetic wax that fitted so cleverly. Then he squeezed the trigger of the .45.
In the awful blast of the gun that Rudolph could still hear while his skull was shattering into tiny bits his last remembrance was that the round hole in the nose of his final lover, the terrible .45, was exactly the same size as the one in the big guy’s ear and that Riley’s first name had to be Buddy.
The Veiled Woman
I
Lodi’s soft warm hand shook me awake. “Sh-h-h, Karl. Don’t say anything.” I could barely hear her. “There’s someone downstairs.”
The .45 I kept under my pillow was in my hand before I had my eyes fully open. The bedroom was in total darkness because of the heavy curtains covering the windows, and the only sound was the almost inaudible purr of the air-conditioning unit. I pressed the fingers of my free hand lightly to Lodi’s lips to still her whisper and to let her know I was now fully awake.
I swung my bare feet to the floor and stood up. The fact that I was as naked as one of Mike Angelo’s cherubs didn’t occur to me then, and even if it had I wouldn’t have wasted time looking for a robe.
Moving on tiptoe, I crossed the room and was careful about shooting the bolts on the door. I could hear nothing from downstairs, but that didn’t mean no one was down there. Lodi’s almost incredibly sharp sense of hearing was something I had learned long ago not to doubt. Twenty years among the perils of the jungle develops the senses like nothing else, and the African jungle was where Lodi had come from.
With the door opened wide enough for me to slip through, I stepped into the upper hall. Still no sound. A tomb would have been noisier. No light either. It was like walking through a bottle of ink.
Still no sound from below. I wasn’t surprised. Whoever was down there wouldn’t be a common garden-variety burglar. Burglars didn’t come out here in the wilderness eighty-odd miles north of New York City in search of loot.
I went down that flight of carpeted steps, like a jungle cat stalking its prey. The damp chill of early morning began to flow across my skin, reminding me of my lack of clothing. At the foot of the stairs I froze in my tracks, listening, making sure the safety catch on the .45 was off.
More silence. Nothing stirred, nothing breathed. Had Lodi been mistaken after all? Had her nerves, under a growing strain for almost two months now, finally started to give way? I refused to believe it...
And then I heard it. A sound so slight that only keen ears straining to listen would possibly have caught it. The chink of metal against metal, and that only once.
The study. The wall safe was in there; a vault actually, built by the previous owner. It would be the natural place for an intruder to start his search.
Silently I crossed to the study door, the gun ready in my fist. The door, I discovered, had been left open no more than an inch or two to enable the man in there to catch any sound from outside the room.
Slowly, with almost painful care, I pushed the door inward. As the space between its edge and the jamb widened, I saw a circle of light fixed on the combination knob of the vault. A man was standing there, one ear pressed to the metal surface of the vault door, his fingers slowly manipulating the dial. He was alone.
I leaned forward and groped along the wall until my fingers found the light switch. I flipped it, flooding the room with light, said, “Cheerio, you son of a bitch,” and shot him through the head.
The sound of the heavy .45 was like an exploding bomb in the confines of that small room. Blood and brains and bone showered the vault door and the black-clad figure melted into the rug.
“Karl!” It was Lodi calling from the head of the stairs. “Darling, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Go on back to bed, baby. I’ll be up in a minute.”
“Did you... did you—?”
“I sure as hell did. I’ll tell you about it over grapefruit in the morning.”
I crossed the room and knelt beside the body. There wasn’t much left of him above the eyebrows, and what was below them was a face I had never seen before. The pockets held nothing personal that might identify him. An oiled-silk packet containing as nice a set of burglar tools as you’d find anywhere, but that and a half-empty pack of Philip Morris made up the total.
I didn’t like that. In fact, I liked it so little that I scooped the .45 off the rug and stood up, all in one quick movement.
Too late! Before I could turn around a silken drawl said, “No further, Mr. Terris. Stand perfectly still.”
I said a couple words under my breath but that was as far as I went. I heard the rustle of silk and the sound of light steps coming toward my back. “Let the gun drop... Now, kick it away from you.”
I could smell her now: the music of an expensive perfume and the nice female smell of a lovely woman. The drawl said, “You may turn around now and lower your hands. Any more than that and I’ll shoot you through the knee.”