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The clock was ticking for Guilty and Trapped, which had not much more than a year yet to live, but Scottie was still willing to buy new stories, though not at the old breathless rate. His big problem was the 10,000-worders, of which he needed two per issue as ballast for the multitude of shorter ones. There wasn’t much of a supply of them floating around in the pool of Manhunt rejects that made up most of the non-Silverberg portion of each issue, and so he depended on me to continue writing them at a rate of six or seven a year. Here is the one I did in January, 1961. My title was “Killer on the Lam” but Scottie had already published my “Man on the Run” (not included here), of the same length and a somewhat similar plot, in the February, 1960 Trapped. Did he think that my new title would remind readers that the new story was a retread of the old one? Or had he forgotten all about “Man on the Run” by that time, and simply thought “The Killer and the Blonde” was a sexier title? Who knows? I don’t, that’s for sure. Neither does Ed Chase, whose name was on the story when it appeared in the June, 1961 issue of Guilty. Since that issue was on the stands only three months after I turned the story in, you can see how thin Scottie’s inventory of novelettes was getting.
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THE KILLER AND THE BLONDE (9.46)
Even a killer needs a girl at times, but dolls can kill too.
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It was close to midnight when Henstall pulled into the filling station on Route 96, just outside of Corwin. It was a moonless June night, pretty hot, and the road was on the quiet side now, although traffic was heavy this way during the day.
This was the third time he had stopped off at this filling station in the last week. That was enough time to discover that there was only one man on duty after nine o’clock, and that the proprietor showed up at half past twelve to pick up the day’s take and lock the place up.
Henstall let the car inch up to the gas pump, and waited. In a moment, the night attendant came scuttling out of the office. A big grease-monkey, not too bright, with red hair dangling in his eyes.
“Howdy,” he said.
Henstall nodded toward the pump. “Fill ’er up.”
“Regular?”
“That’s right,” Henstall said. He got out of the car. “Which way’s the john?”
“Straight through the office, in back, mister.”
Henstall thanked him and trudged across the gravel to the service station. He went outside, through the little office, into the cubicle of a bathroom in back. He locked the door. He glanced at himself in the tarnished mirror. The other two times he had visited the filling station this week, he’d been wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a fake mustache. Tonight he had no glasses, no mustache.
It made a difference. Not much of one, but enough to keep the grease-monkey from remembering that he had been here before. Tomorrow, he’d start growing the moustache for real. And tomorrow he’d be in another state, anyway.
He took out his gun, checked the safety, and slipped the little automatic into his jacket pocket. Flushing the toilet, by way of a red herring, he stepped out of the John.
The grease-monkey was still busy with the car, wiping the windshield. As soon as it got across the state line, Henstall planned to sell the car for junk. It was a 1942 Dodge that he’d picked up for $35. It just about barely drove, but that was all he was interested in. Maybe there’d be an alarm out for a man driving a 1942 Dodge, but by this time tomorrow he’d be in back of a different car, a newer one.
He pretended to be studying the rack of road-maps on the office wall. The attendant finished cleaning Henstall’s windshield and came in.
“Anything else I can do for you, mister?”
“You can let me have one of these maps.”
“Sure. Take all you want. They’re free.”
Henstall selected a map carefully, put it in his breast pocket. Then he said, “What do I owe you for the gas?”
“Three eighty-five, including tax.” The attendant chuckled. “How much you get per gallon in that car, anyway? Nine miles. Ten?”
“About that,” Henstall said casually. He reached into his jacket pocket, as though getting out his wallet, and in a smooth motion drew out the gun. He clicked the safety meaningfully. “All right,” he said. “Open up the register and start handing it over.”
“This a joke, mister?”
“Yeah. Big joke. Hah hah hah.” Henstall gestured with the gun. “Come on. Snap to it!”
The grease-monkey had gone very pale. Big red-brown freckles were standing out against the whiteness of his face. He was only a kid, Henstall thought. Twenty-two, maybe twenty-three. Perhaps the proprietor’s son. Henstall wondered whether the kid was the hero type.
“Shake it,” Henstall said thinly.
“Okay. Okay. I’m going.”
–
The kid walked slowly over to the cash register, rang up No Sale, and opened it. Henstall tensed. At least once before a station attendant had opened a cash register and came out blazing with a .38. But his aim had been lousy, luckily.
The kid began to gather up the money. Henstall watched greedily as he saw fives and tens in the stack.
“Never mind the small change,” Henstall said. “Just the bills.”
“But there’s a lot of change,” the kid said. “Don’t you want it? Every nickel? Here. Look.” He scooped up a handful of change with a sarcastic gesture and held it out, jingling it.
Then, suddenly, he drew his arm back and hurled the coins in Henstall’s face.
Henstall automatically threw up his left arm to protect his face. The cloud of nickels and dimes confused him for a moment, but only a moment.
He saw the kid come charging toward him.
He squeezed the trigger.
The silencer made a little putting noise, and the gun kicked back in his hand, and he watched the kid go staggering back. The silencer and the general confusion had distorted Henstall’s usually perfect aim, and so the bullet had gone into the kid’s chest about two inches to the left of where Henstall had wanted it to go. But the effect was the same. The kid grabbed at his chest, swayed, toppled with a heavy crash to the floor, rolled over, kicked his legs twice convulsively, and died.
“Goddam hero,” Henstall muttered contemptuously.
He knew he didn’t have much time, now. He had to clear out before another car pulled up. Stepping over the body, he went to the cash register and with gloved hands pulled the bills out. He didn’t stop to count, but he could see there was well over five hundred bucks in the till. Maybe even a thousand. A gas station on a main town-to-town highway does a pretty good business during a day, even if only a little bit of it is profit.
Not a bad take, he still thought.
He wasn’t overly troubled about the killing. He had killed half a dozen times before in his robbery career, and it was no longer a novelty to him, or any burden on his conscience. It merely made things simpler for him, now. There was no chance that the witness would identify him.
He tidied the bills up, put them away. He slipped the gun back into his pocket. He took a last look around, making sure of everything. Then he went outside, to his car.
He switched the motor on, letting it warm up for couple of seconds, put it in gear. He glanced back at the silent filling station.
He drove away.
–
The old car had a top speed of about forty miles an hour. After that, it began to rattle and groan, and gave the impression of being about to fall apart completely. But Henstall still had no intention of driving past forty.
Forty happened to be the speed limit on this road, and though he doubted there were many traffic cops lying in wait this hour of the night, the last thing in the world that he wanted was to get picked up for speeding, with a recently-fired gun in his pocket and five hundred or a thousand dollars worth of stolen money nestling in his wallet.
He drove slowly, then, and carefully, keeping in the right-hand lane. Before he had gone five miles, headlights appeared in his rear-view mirror, and he felt a moment of nasty tension. But he kept on rolling along at his steady speed, while the car behind him gained, and gained and then shot past him on the left and vanished in front of him. He allowed himself a sigh of relief.
Two other cars passed him in the next ten minutes. He wondered if any of them had tried to get gas at the filling station. It was twelve twenty, now. In another ten minutes, the station proprietor would be showing up to close the place up.
But the station was better than a dozen miles back, already. By the time the proprietor had summoned the police, Henstall would be another ten miles along. With each minute, he’d be further and further away from the scene of the crime, and the job of detection would grow less possible.
His foot was steady on the gas. His eyes were fixed on the road.
He had been doing this for years, now. It was the only life he knew, the only life he wanted. A solitary man who knew how to handle a gun and who wasn’t afraid of trouble.
He motored back and forth across the country, from Jersey City to San Francisco, then south into Mexico, north into Canada, endless roaming, stopping at hotels, picking up his cash on route from filling stations and grocery stores and any other likely victim. He had no home. He hadn’t worked in years. He liked being nomad.
Most of the time, he had a woman with him. But for the last three months, he’d been traveling alone. Ever since Maureen had split up with him in Tucson.
He thought about Maureen.
A tall girl, around thirty, with big breasts and wide hips and a hard tough core. Good in bed. He missed her, as much as he could miss anybody. They had driven around the country together for eleven months, but finally she had gotten tired of the wandering life.
She wanted to settle down and go back to her old trade of peddling herself. They had been arguing about it for days, and then in Tuscon she had just walked out on him.
He hadn’t found anyone to replace her, yet. He needed a girl he could trust. But he was in no hurry. Henstall was accustomed to being alone. He needed a woman in bed pretty often, but he could get along without a traveling companion if he had to.
There had been half a dozen traveling companions. Some of them for two weeks, one of them for more than a year. He was starting to forget their names. He could remember their bodies, and the way they had made use of their bodies, but faces and names were beginning to blur.
He drove on.
It was nearly one in the morning, now. Nobody had certainly been discovered by this time. He wondered whether the alarm had gone out, yet. The old car didn’t have a radio, so he couldn’t tune into one of the all-night programs and find out if the public had been alerted.
But he didn’t intend to drive much further tonight. He was better than forty miles from the scene of the crime already. As soon as he got over the line, he’d start thinking about finding himself a place to bunk down for the night.
He came up to the state line in fifteen more minutes. The part of his mind that worried about such things had half-expected a roadblock, a dozen police cars lined up with searchlights to train on him. But the less melodramatic segment of himself knew that no such thing would be there, and that segment was right.
A sign proclaimed the fact that he was leaving the State of Pennsylvania, and another sign a little further along welcomed him to Ohio, and the asphalt of the road changed color almost imperceptibly, and that was all there was to it.
Except that now he was in another state.
Five minutes later, he had come to a medium size town — population 28,106, as a sign proudly informed him. He decided to stop here. He was tired of driving, for one thing, and he was anxious to count the money, for another.
He drove through the sleepy town until he came to what looked like the downtown section. A blinking green neon sign advertised the Phoenix Hotel — ROOMS RESTAURANT BAR—and he made a quick left turn and pulled into the front of the Phoenix Hotel’s parking lot.
–
The hotel was an old-fashioned six-story brick building that dominated the largely two-story buildings of the town’s main street. Henstall got his one suitcase out of the trunk of the car and trudged around to the front entrance of the hotel.
He had expected to find the place dead on a Wednesday night in June at almost one-thirty in the morning, but to his surprise it was fairly lively. He had to mount a flight of stairs to get to the registration desk, and on the way up he heard the sound of a jukebox.
When he reached the top of the stairs he saw a bar at the back of the lobby, and the bar was doing good business. People were dancing in there, and drinking, and laughing. Evidently he had come to the town’s nightspot, the one patch of life after dark.
Henstall walked up to the desk. The night clerk was a tall, dignified man in his sixties, lean and spare. He eyed Henstall with aloofness and said, “Yes?”
“I’d like a room.”
“Traveling alone?”
“That’s right,” Henstall said.
“Want a private bath?”
“Preferably.”
“Got a room on the third floor facing back, for six-fifty. That okay?”
Henstall almost smiled at the hint that the hotel was all filled up except for that one room. He could tell from the number of keys dangling on the rack behind the desk that the hotel was practically empty.
Henstall knew these small town hotels. They hardly ever had any guests, except for sales men on their routes, and weary travelers who simply couldn’t go any further that night, and adulterous couples from the other side of the state line. Hotels like these made their money in the restaurant and in the bar, and from businessmen’s conventions in the daytime.
“I’ll take the room,” Henstall said.
“Sign this, please.”
Henstall took the proffered pen and signed the register with a flourish checking in as Roger C. Harkness of Buffalo, New York. He had eight different names that he used for signing hotel registers, each name accompanied by a different hand-writing, and he used each name in strict rotation. Anyone who tried to trace him across the continent would have a devil of a time.
The desk clerk tapped a bell. “Front!”
The night bellhop appeared. He was a gangling, acne-pocked twenty-year-old a size too big for his uniform. He took the room key and Henstall’s suitcase and started off toward the elevator.
The elevator was an open cage that creaked its way up to the third floor protesting all the way. Henstall was shown to his room, which was neither more nor less than he had been expecting: narrow, long, dimly lit, badly painted, with uncomfortable-looking bed and an ancient-looking chest of drawers.
The bellhop put his suitcase down, handed him the key, and said, “Will that be all, sir?”
“That’s all,” Henstall said.
“Are you sure that will be all?”
Henstall smiled. A single man, checking into a hotel late at night, might be expected to have certain needs. Bellhops had an almost universal way of anticipating those needs. Henstall said, “How late is the bar open?”
“Till four in the morning, sir.” He grinned confidently. “If you come down, you might ask for Helena. She’s a lot of fun, sir.”
Henstall nodded and gave the boy half a dollar. The door closed.
Ask for Helena. Sure. And Helena would give the bellhop a kickback of a dollar or two. Even in the quiet towns, you found that sort of stuff.
Well, Henstall thought, maybe a drink and a little fun might be in order. But not for a while.
–
He locked and chained the door, washed his hands with care, and took out his wallet. Been seventy-three dollars in his wallet before the robbery, he knew. He was an extremely precise man.
He began to take the bills out, and stacked them neatly in little piles on the scarred old desk near the window. He was agreeably pleased to see how many of the bills were tens. More than half of the first two dozen.
Henstall worked patiently until all of the bills had been laid out. Then, methodically, he counted off seven tens and three singles and put them to one side. The rest was his take for the night.
One twenty-dollar bill.
Thirty-one tens.
Fifty-eight fives.
Fifty-six singles.
$706 altogether. A damned fine haul, Henstall thought in satisfaction. Even if it did make a huge wad in his wallet. He couldn’t carry that much money around with him comfortably. Opening the desk drawer, he took out an envelope with the hotel imprint on it and shuffled all but forty dollars into it. He sealed the envelope and tucked it away at the bottom of his unpacked suitcase. Taking the gun from his jacket pocket, he put it next to the envelope of money, covering it over with some shirts.
There, Henstall thought. Everything was taken care of for the time being.
Now to relax. Now to get some fun, and then some sleep. Tomorrow, he’d drive on to the first decent-sized city he came to, sell the car, and buy another one not quite so old, a ’47 or ’48. And then continue westward, maybe into Indiana. It was getting along toward hot weather time, and he wanted to be out in the west by the time it got broiling—say in Wyoming or Montana.
He surveyed his room. Everything okay.
He unchained the door, went out into the hall, locked up, tested the door a couple of times to make sure it was really locked. Then he walked down the hall and rang for the elevator.
The bellhop grinned at him out of the wire cage. “So you decided to come down anyway.”
“Yeah.”
“I told Helena you might. She isn’t busy right now.”
“Which one is she?” Henstall asked.
“Tall blonde in a black dress. Sitting at the bar. You can’t miss her.”
“Thanks,” Henstall said.
He left the elevator, walked through the lobby to the bar, stood in the entrance for a moment looking around.
The kid was right.
You couldn’t miss her.
–
She was sitting on a barstool, with her head resting on her elbow, and even twenty feet away she seemed to be giving off magnetic radiations. The black dress was tight and low-cut, scooped out in front to show the creamy tops of big, firm breasts.
She was a big girl. Like Maureen. Only better looking than Maureen. She had golden hair, and a good face, and she didn’t seem to be past twenty-five yet. A couple of yokels were trying to make time with her.
Henstall walked over to the bar and fitted himself into an empty slot just to her left.
She gave him a warm smile as he sat down. She was interested in him, that was obvious.
He smiled back and said, “What’s a good thing to drink in this town?”
“Depends on what you like.”
“They know how to make a martini here?”
She shrugged, and the shrug did things to her figure. “Order one and find out.”
“Suppose I order two?”
“You must be real thirsty.”
Henstall laughed. “Not both for me. One for me, one for you.”
“That sounds like a friendly arrangement.”
“Is it okay?”
“Sure,” she said.
He got the bartender’s eye and called for a couple of martinis. The bartender nodded, grinning at Helena. Henstall didn’t care. Everybody in the room knew what Helena was here for, and Henstall didn’t worry about that.
The martinis arrived. They weren’t exactly up to the Madison Avenue standard—Henstall figured them around three parts gin to 2 parts the vermouth, and not very good gin at that—but he had long since learned not to be fussy when he was out in the sticks.
“Let’s get one of these booths,” he suggested.
“Okay.”
They found a booth in the corner, near the jukebox. She bent over to sit down, and showed him a lot of nice tight flesh that made him all the more glad he had decided to stop at this hotel. He hadn’t been with a woman for a while. He could use one.
“You from out of town, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“Far?”
“Buffalo.”
“What brings you out this way?” she asked.
Henstall shrugged. “Just taking me a little trip. Heading west for the summer.”
“Alone?”
“I started out alone,” he said. “I figure it’ll stay that way. Unless I pick up a companion on the way.”
“Where you heading?”
“Montana, Wyoming, maybe. Why? Interested in coming along?”
She smiled. “I could be.”
“Don’t you like it here?”
“It’s gets dull,” she said. “The same old jerks night after night. I’ve lived in this town for twenty years. That’s a goddam long time to live in one town.”
“I’ve never lived in the same place as much as twenty months,” Henstall said.
“That’s the way to be. Footloose.”
“Yeah, he said. He finished off his martini, and he gulped down the last of hers. “Refill?”
“Why not?”
He signaled the bartender for two more. At sixty cents a drink, it didn’t matter how bad they were. And he could fling the dough around, considering that he was some seven hundred bucks ahead of where he’d been at dinnertime this evening.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Roger Harkness.”
“I’m Helena.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Bellhop told me,” Henstall said. “He’s a go-getter, that kid.”
Helena scowled. “Wants to be a millionaire by the time he’s thirty, that’s his trouble.
He took out his cigarettes, offered her one. She shook her head. He lit up one for himself.
It was close to two-fifteen now. The crowd was starting to thin out.
Henstall said, “All these people here are locals?”
“Most of them. The rest come from the next town. Busy place they got here.”
“So I notice. I was surprised.”
“It’s kind of an easy-going town,” Helena said. “We can get away with a lot here.”
He nodded slowly. “Look,” he said, “how’d you like to come upstairs for a while?”
“I’d like it fine.”
“Let’s go, then.”
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”
They left the bar, and got the bellhop to take them up to the third floor in the rickety elevator. Helena didn’t seem at all troubled by the obviousness of her trip upstairs. Well, Henstall thought, she didn’t have to pretend about her virtue to the bellhop.
Henstall opened the door. She went in first, switched on the light. He closed the door, chained it.
She turned to him and said, “We ought to get the business part of this over with first.”
“Okay.”
“I like to get everything settled first, so it doesn’t spoil the mood,” she said. “I get fifteen bucks.”
Another time, he might have bargained. She was obviously expecting to be haggled down to ten. But he wasn’t in the mood for haggling. He took out his wallet, slipped a ten and a five loose, and handed them to her. She folded the bills up and tucked them in her purse.
“Now we can forget all that sordid stuff,” she said. She put her purse down, kicked off her shoes. Even without the shoes, she was still a tall girl—five feet six, Henstall guessed. He liked them tall.
“Come here,” he said.
She came to him. She was big and warm, and she fitted into his arms as though she’d been practicing. He felt her body up against him, the fullness of her breasts, the firmness of her thighs. She kissed him with her eyes wide open and her mouth likewise.
Statuesque was the word, Henstall thought. Big hips, a big behind, a big bust. But not sloppy. Not fat or jiggly or paunchy. Just big.
He liked his women big.
He reached out for her, gathered her in.
He felt good about it, thinking that it was a fine feeling to kill a man and get away with seven hundred smackers and then to wind up finishing the night off in bed with a blonde with a 40-inch bust.
A damn fine feeling.
And she was an expert. She knew just how to make a man feel like Superman.
She showed him. Lovingly, and in great detail, for the next hour or so.
It was worth it, Henstall decided, when it was all over.
It was worth every penny of it. And then some.
–
There was soft music playing. Henstall woke with a start, and realized that he had dozed off. He sat bolt upright, blinking, rubbing his eyes.
He looked at his watch. Four in the morning.
He was naked. And there was a naked girl in the room with him. For a fraction of a second he was lost, confused. Then he got his bearings. He remembered coming to this town, getting the hotel room, picking up the big blonde chippie in the bar, coming up here to have a wild time. It annoyed him that he had gone to sleep. It wasn’t like him to relax his guard so much. With all that money in the room —
He looked at the girl. She had turned on the radio, and she was standing with her back toward him, and he admired the long pale sweep of her back, and the taut full globes of her buttocks, and then all of a sudden he realized exactly what it was she was doing.
She was bending over his open suitcase, going through his belongings.
He was more angry with himself for having relaxed his guard so much than he was angry with her. You couldn’t expect much from a small-town whore except that she’d try to rob you. But you had your own skin to look out for, and if you didn’t—
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he snapped suddenly.
She swung around to face him, very pale, her breasts rising and falling in agitation. “Oh—Roger—you woke up—”
“Damn right I—”
Then he saw what she had found.
His gun.
She was holding it in her hand, pointing it at the floor not far from the bed.
“Put that down!” he shouted.
“Roger, I didn’t know you were carrying—”
“Put it down!”
“I just wanted to look at it,” she said. “I’m not going to hurt it. I—”
“I told you to let it go,” he said.
Suddenly, he panicked. It was one of the rare times in his life when he had ever lost control of himself. The thought of her holding his gun was intolerable to him. He had to get the gun away from her. This minute.
He sprang from the bed, and charged toward her, in a blind rage.
“Give me that!” he shouted, groping for the gun.
He lurched for it. She pulled back.
There was a putting sound.
Henstall felt a fiery pain in his side.
The girl stood there, naked, looking at him in alarm. Henstall realized after a moment that he hadn’t been shot, just grazed. The bullet had whisked past his left side a couple of inches above the hip, had drawn an angry red groove along his skin, and kept on going, bouncing off the steam-pipe and skittering to a halt in the corner of the room.
“You crazy bitch,” he muttered, shaken.
“Did I hurt you, Roger?”
“Skinned me, that’s all. Put the damn gun down before you kill somebody!”
She was pale and quivering. She put the gun down on the dresser and went over to him, obviously deeply concerned. “Roger, I’m so sorry. It just went off in my hand. I was only holding it, and you came charging at me like a wild man and I got scared, and—”
“You could have killed me.”
“I didn’t mean anything. I was just looking at the gun, Roger.”
He scowled at her. “It wasn’t a toy.”
“I’m sorry. I told you I was sorry. Let me see what I did. Turn around.”
Henstall was still angry at her, but she seemed so obviously upset by the incident that his anger began to fade. After all, she had been extraordinary in bed, and here she was, a big naked girl with such squeezable goodies, and she was looking at him shaking her head and clucking her tongue over him.
“Let me wash it off,” she said. “You’ve got powder burns or something. You’ll get infected.”
He didn’t have a chance to object. She went into the bathroom, returning with a wet washcloth, and swabbed down the crease where the bullet had flown past. Henstall’s heart was still racing, but he was calming down now. It had been a narrow squeak. And his own damn fault, he told himself angrily. It was one thing to take a floozie up to your room for an hour of fun. It was another thing entirely to doze off and leave yourself completely at her mercy.
But he had been lucky. He was going to get off lightly, this time. It was a lesson to him, to watch out for such carelessness in the future.
He let Helena finish taking care of him, then rose from the bed, picked up the slug that had narrowly missed him and put it in his wallet. He didn’t want it lying around, just in the improbable event that some shrewd police officer got hold of it and connected it with the bullet that had killed the gas station attendant.
He said, “Suppose you tell me now what you were looking for in my luggage.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Sure you know. You were looking for money.”
She reddened. “Okay. I was.”
“Fifteen bucks wasn’t enough?”
“Roger, listen, I’m so terribly sorry—”
“Sorry that you got caught, you mean.” He shook his head. “You’re all alike. Turn your back on a woman and she robs you.”
“Maybe you can tell me something,” she said.
“Such as?”
“Why you carry a loaded gun.”
He moistened his lips. “I do a lot of traveling around. There are times when it’s comforting to know there’s a gun handy.”
She seemed to accept that explanation readily enough. She settled down in the armchair, looking at him. He eyed her curiously. She had a fine body, and obviously didn’t mind letting him look at it.
But he couldn’t trust her.
She had gone for his money. She had damn near shot him in the stomach. Had the gun gone off by accident, really? Or was the only “accident” the fact that she had missed him.
“What are you thinking about, Roger?”
“I’m thinking that I’m sore as hell at you.”
“Listen, I didn’t mean to pull the trigger—”
“I don’t mean the gun business. I mean going through my luggage. I ought to throw you the hell out of here on your butt for that.”
“Don’t throw me out, Roger. I’d like to stay here all night. We can have some more fun. I really enjoyed it with you, Roger. More than with anybody else. The others, well it’s just something I do for the buck. But when I was doing it with you I felt like it was something special. Know what I mean?”
He scowled at her, then nodded.
Well, might as well let her stick around, he thought. She couldn’t be trusted, but she was fine in the hay, and he wanted to get his fifteen bucks worth. If she was still willing to dish it out, he was more than willing to accept. But he would keep his eye on her. No more dozing off.
He started to reach for her, to draw her back into the bed.
The music that was playing came to a halt. An announcer’s voice said, “Hello again, everybody. This is Jim Leonard, and the time is exactly seventeen minutes after four in the morning, in case anybody cares, and let’s have a look at the news tickers to see what’s been happening in the world between sides. First of all, the Route 96 murder case—”
Quickly, Henstall leaned forward to shut it off. But Helena caught his wrist.
“Let’s hear it,” she said.
Henstall didn’t protest. He didn’t want to arouse her suspicions.
“—as we told you earlier, 22-year-old Fred Conkel was shot shortly after midnight at his father’s service station on Route 96 just outside of Corwin, Pennsylvania. He was dead when his father arrived at 12.30 to close the station for the night. The elder Conkel said that upwards of five hundred dollars had been taken from the till. Latest report is that the murder gun has been identified as a .38 automatic. No other information seems to be available, and police fear that the killer may have slipped over the state line into Ohio sometime early this morning—”
The girl was staring at him strangely.
“You—”
Henstall scowled. Realizing what she was up to, he made a grab for the gun on the dresser, but she was too quick for him, grabbing the gun while he was still getting off the bed.
She swung around and stood with her back to the wall, her legs spread, her breasts rising and falling rapidly. And the gun trained on his mid-section.
“Don’t try to jump me again,” she said. “This time I won’t miss. This time I’ll mean to shoot, if you make a wrong move.”
–
He didn’t make any moves.
He just stood there, trying to be calm, eyeing her lush naked body with beady-eyed interest. He said in a level voice, “I don’t know what the hell’s gotten into you, but I wish you’d stop waving my gun around. Put it down, will you? Put it down.”
“I know a little about guns,” she said. “This is a .38 automatic.”
“What of it?”
“And you crossed the state line after midnight. With a loaded gun. Traveling alone. You held up that gas station didn’t you? You killed that boy.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Am I?” she asked.
“I didn’t hold up any gas stations. I didn’t kill any kids.”
“This gun says you did,” she said slowly. “It adds up, Roger—or whatever the hell your name is. Traveling alone late at night. And the way you jumped to turn the radio off when they began talking about the Route 96 murder. I watched you face during that newscast. It wasn’t the face of an innocent man.”
“A regular little detective, aren’t you?” he asked.
A speculative gleam came into her eyes. “That broadcast said you had gotten away with upwards of five hundred dollars. Is that so?”
“You’re the detective. You tell me.”
She held the gun as though she knew how to use it. “I’ll make a little deal with you,” she said levelly. “You give me half the money you got from that gas station, and I’ll put my clothes on and walk out of here and won’t make any trouble for you.”
“And if I say no?”
“Well then,” she said, “I’ll just have to shoot you and take some of the money. And then I’ll go downstairs and call the cops, and say that I was with a client and he pulled a gun on me, and in the struggle I got the gun away from him and shot him.
“Then they’ll compare the slug in your belly with the one in the gas station kid, and they’ll know who you really were, and they won’t make any trouble for me and I’ll be a couple of hundred bucks better off.”
It was fantastic, Henstall thought, standing here in the nude arguing over life and death with a busty, naked blonde who was keeping him covered with his own gun.
But she had him.
She had him where it hurt.
He was silent for a long moment, thinking over the ifs, and buts, and whereases of the situation. There was no way he could get the gun away from her without getting a bullet in the belly. She was ten feet away, and by the time he covered ten feet she’d have ripped a hole in him big enough to throw a cat through.
And he couldn’t talk the gun away from her. She was too smart, too money-hungry for that.
She had him.
“You thieving bitch,” he muttered thinly.
“Flattery will get you nowhere. Where’s the money?”
“I tell you I’m not the man who robbed that gas station.”
“Just keep on telling me, and see where it gets you.” She reached into his trousers, keeping him carefully covered while she did it, and came up with his wallet. A quick riffle told her that he was carrying less than a hundred dollars in it. “Not there,” she said. “Okay, wise boy. Tell me where the dough is.”
His answer was brief and unprintable.
“That isn’t polite,” she said calmly. She glanced at the suitcase. “It’s in there, isn’t it?”
He said nothing.
She said, “Sure it is. Okay, then. Do I have to take each thing out of there and dump it on the floor, or will you just tell me right away where I should look?”
“Stinking slut.”
“Watch your language or I’ll take all the money,” she warned. “Where is it, now?”
“Go to hell.”
She drew a deep breath, and despite his anger Henstall was stirred by the way her breasts expanded steeply. The nakedness of her upset him. The physical presence of the girl, her big glowing busty body, made it hard for him to think straight. He had never been in a fix like this before in his life.
She said, “Okay, pal. If you don’t tell me where the money is, I’ll shoot first, then look for it. You’re a wanted man. I can’t get in trouble for nailing you. Well?”
She waited.
After a long moment of watching the tautness of her trigger finger, Henstall said in a leaden voice, “You win. The money’s in a hotel envelope at the bottom of the suitcase.”
–
Keeping her eyes and the gun pointed squarely at him, she groped around in the suitcase with her left hand until her fingers closed on the thick envelope.
She drew it out and handed it to him.
“Here,” she said. “Go sit down at that desk and count that money into two equal piles. Go on.”
Scowling, he took the envelope from her. There wasn’t even a chance of making a grab for the gun. Conscious of the humiliation he was experiencing, Henstall padded across the room to the desk, sat down, ripped open the envelope. All that beautiful money, he thought. He began to count it out while the girl watched with gleaming eyes.
It took him a while. Finally the job was done.
“There,” he said. “Three hundred fifty-three bucks apiece. I hope you’re happy.”
“Damn right I am.”
“What now?” he asked.
“Go into the bathroom, lock the door, and stay in there while I’m getting dressed. If I hear the door unlocking before I tell you I’m ready, I’ll shoot to kill. Got that? Go on, now. And don’t worry about your money. I’ll leave your half alone.”
“I bet you will.”
She made a contemptuous face. “All right, take your half into the john with you. Just get moving, that’s all. Scat!”
Henstall’s hands were shaking with rage as he scooped up his money and went into the bathroom. He locked the door. He put the bills on the sink and sat down on the edge of the bathtub.
Something like this had never been done to him before. To get his gun away from him, not once but twice, to hold him up for his own money, to herd him into a bathroom like a simpleton—
She was at her most vulnerable, now, out there all tangled up in straps and garter-belts and whatnot as she put her clothes on. But he didn’t dare open the door and charge at her. No matter how snarled up in the process of putting on her bra she was, she would always have time to pick up the gun and drill him before he could get to her.
A formidable bitch, he thought. Much too smart to be rotting away in a town like this for the rest of her days. Any girl who could get him into this kind of fix—
An idea struck him.
“Helena?”
“What do you want?”
“Can I come out now?”
“Not yet. Not till I tell you.”
“I’ve got a proposition to make.”
“Such as?”
“Let me out and I’ll tell you.”
“You just wait,” she said.
He waited.
He waited a damned long time.
Finally she said. “Okay. Come on out!”
She was fully dressed, dressed to kill, and she was holding the gun pointed at him, and the money he had left on the desk was gone from sight. Henstall emerged, feeling uncomfortable at his nakedness at gunpoint.
“What’s the deal?” she said.
He moistened his lips. “I do a lot of traveling,” he began. “Back and forth across the country. It’s the life I like. Up to Canada, down to Mexico, all around.”
“So?”
“I support myself with little jobs here and there. Like the one I pulled last night. You loused up my income for this month grabbing half.”
“What of it?” she said.
“Just this,” he told her. “I’ve been traveling alone for the past few months. But I like company. Especially blonde company around your size and build. And you’re the kind of dame who’d be an asset to me. You’re resourceful, and tough and you can handle yourself in an emergency. We’d make a great team you and me.”
“You kidding me or something?”
“I’m dead serious!” Henstall said with fervor. “Listen, till tonight there hasn’t been a person in the world ever got me at a disadvantage. I was sore as hell, sure, but I can respect ability. And you’ve got ability. And I’ve had experience. Between the two of us, we can pick up thousands a month. Live like royalty. One big joy-ride all over the continent. Isn’t that better than being stuck in a sleazy hotel in a stupid little hick town? You said yourself you wanted to get out of here.”
“Yeah,” she breathed.
“Well, here’s your chance.”
“You don’t hold no grudges for all this?”
Henstall laughed. “What grudges? I see you as a partner. Share and share alike. Champagne and caviar for you, the same for me.”
She was silent a long moment.
“Well?” he prodded.
She nodded. “Okay. It’s a deal, fellow. Whatever your real name is. I’ll go with you.”
–
Henstall felt a surge of triumph. He hadn’t expected her to agree so quickly. He had figured she would stop to weigh the wisdom of pulling up her stakes, of going off careering around the country with a guy she hardly knew.
But she was sold on the idea. He could tell by the gleam in her eye.
She said, “When do we leave?”
“Soon as you’re ready. You got much stuff?”
“Yeah, but most of it’s crud,” she said. “I could fit the important stuff into one suitcase.”
“Anybody you want to say goodbye to?” he asked.
“Nah.”
“Bills to pay?”
“Forget ’em.”
“What about a bank account to clear out?”
She laughed. “My life’s savings are seventy-three bucks. Isn’t worth bothering about. Some year I’ll come back and withdraw them.”
“So we could leave right now,” Henstall said.
“Just about. What time is it?”
“A little before five.”
“Okay,” she said. “You get yourself packed up and check out of the hotel. I live in a rooming house on North Third Street. That’s two blocks from the hotel, make a left turn leaving the parking lot, then turn right on Third and I’ll be waiting out front for you. Give me maybe half an hour to get everything together.”
“Right.”
She grinned at him. “You sure you want me?”
“Positive,” he said. “Any girl with your build and your talents is a real asset.”
“Glad to know that,” she said, giving him a provocative hip-wiggle as she walked toward the door.
He watched her go. He smiled to himself. So the evening wasn’t a total loss, after all, even if she had lifted half his boodle. He’d get it back, one way or another, now that she had agreed to come traveling with him.
Hurriedly, he packed, resealing the envelope of cash and stuffing it at the bottom of his suitcase, putting the gun down there, getting everything tidied up. Inside of fifteen minutes, he was ready to leave. He checked the room one last time, then went out into the hall.
The hotel was silent.
He rang for the elevator, and waited a long time before it came. The bellhop appeared and looked quizzically at the suitcase.
“Leaving us?”
“Guess so.”
“You didn’t stay long.”
Henstall shrugged. “I wasn’t moving in permanently. I like to get on the road bright and early.”
“We don’t serve breakfast till six-thirty.”
“I’ll eat on the road,” Henstall said.
He checked out, paying his bill quickly and carried his suitcase out back to the parking lot. It was just after sunrise. He felt pretty sleepy— no more than half an hour’s sleep last night—but there would be plenty of time for sleeping later in the day.
He started the car, drove out of the lot, turned left, went up to North Third. Helena was sitting on the stoop of an old frame house, a suitcase at her side.
“Let’s go,” he called.
He got out, opened the trunk, put her suitcase in. She got in beside him and he started the car again.
“You drive?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Good. We can split the driving then. When we get to the western states it’s a long stretch between towns.”
The car rolled on, out of town. Gradually, the morning warmed, as the sun burned away the mist. Henstall drove steadily, saying little, conscious of the full-bodied girl at his side. He figured he’d get out of Ohio by nightfall, on into Indiana, and keep on heading west.
It was eight in the morning, now, and he’d been driving for close to three hours, and the Phoenix Hotel was almost a hundred miles behind them. He stopped the car.
“What’s the matter?” Helena said.
“The muffler’s dragging. Got to jack her up and tighten things up.”
They got out. It was a lonely road, nobody around. In a field across the way, a few sleepy cows were grazing. Henstall opened up the trunk, took out the jack.
Helena said. “Looks like the muffler’s okay to me.”
“Bend down. Take a closer look and you’ll see.”
Frowning, she knelt. Henstall took a deep breath and cracked her across the skull with the jack-handle. She started to get up, stumbled, and turned. He hit her in the throat with his fist, and she turned colors and crumpled up. Blood was welling from her scalp wound.
He carried her into a ditch beside the field and put his ear to her breasts. No heartbeat. Nothing.
He opened her pocketbook and took the bundle of bills out. He stuffed them into his pocket. He went back to the car, got her suitcase out, holding the grips with his jacket flap to keep from fingerprinting it, and tossed it down into the ditch with her.
Henstall smiled in triumph.
She had grabbed his gun twice. She had humiliated him and robbed him.
A pity to kill such a gorgeous dame, he thought. But he had to do it. He couldn’t let anyone live who had done such things to him. How could he ever trust her?
He looked regretfully at the crumpled body, remembering their time in bed together. Then he shrugged. He was even with her. Nobody does stuff like that to me, he thought coldly.
He got back into the car, and drove on westward without thinking of her again.