You Never Know With Women

We drove away the way we had come. I watched the guard in the rearview mirror. He stood in the middle of the road, his hands on his hips, staring after us: a real twelve-minute egg.

“Nice fella,” I said and grinned.

“There’s another like him. They’re both on duty at night.”

“See the dog?”

“Dog?” He glanced at me. “No. What dog?”

“Just a dog. Nice teeth. If anything he looked a little tougher than the guard and sort of hungry. And the barbed wire. Good stuff. Sharp. I guess I’ll have to ask for a little more dough. I’ve got to get me insured.”

“You’re not going to get any more money from us, if that’s what you mean,” Parker snapped.

“That’s what I do mean. Pity you missed the dog. It should be a lot of fun having that cutie roaming around in the dark. Yeah, I guess you’ll have to dip into your sock again, brother.”

“A thousand or nothing,” Parker said, his face hardening. “Please yourself.”

“You’ll have to revise your ideas. I’m in a buyer’s market. You know, Brett might pay me for information. Don’t tell me to please myself unless you want me to.” I glanced at him, saw his eyes narrow. That hit him where it hurt.

“Don’t try that stuff with me, Jackson.”

“Talk it over with Fatso. I want another five hundred or I don’t go ahead. Fatso didn’t tell me about the guards or the dog or the alarms or the wire. He made out it was a soft job—a job you could do in your sleep.”

“I’m warning you, Jackson,” Parker said between his teeth. “You can’t monkey with us. You made a deal and you’ve accepted part payment. You’re going through with it.”

“That’s right. But the fee’s jacked up to fifteen centuries. My union don’t let me fool around with dogs.”

“You’ll take your thousand or you’ll be sorry,” he said, and his hands gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. “I’m not going to be blackmailed by you, you cheap crook.”

“Don’t blame me. Blame Fatso. I’m not a sucker.”

He began to drive fast and we got back to the house in half the time it took us to leave it.

“We’ll see Gorman,” he said.

We saw Gorman.

Fatso sat in a chair and stroked his hard pink face and listened.

“I told him he couldn’t make a monkey out of us,” Parker said. He was white and his eyes had a feverish look.

Gorman stared at me.

“You’d better not try any tricks, Mr. Jackson.”

“No tricks,” I said, smiling at him. “Just another five hundred to take care of the insurance. You want to see the guard and you want to take a gander at the dog. When you’ve seen them, you’ve seen plenty.”

He brooded for a long minute.

“All right,” he said suddenly. “I didn’t know about the guards or the dog myself. I’ll make it another five hundred, but it’s the last you’ll get.”

Parker let out a little explosion of sound.

“Don’t get excited, Dominic,” Gorman said, frowning at him. “If you knew about the guards you should have told me.”

“He’s blackmailing us!” Parker stormed. “You’re crazy to pay him. Where’s it going to stop?”

“Leave this to me,” Gorman said, cool as a cucumber.

Parker stood glaring at me, then he went out.

“I’ll have the dough now,” I said. “It wouldn’t be much use to me if I run into that dog.”

We argued back and forth. After a while we agreed to split it and Gorman handed over two hundred and fifty.

I borrowed an envelope and a sheet of notepaper and prepared another surprise for my bank manager. There was a mailbox just outside the house. I went down the drive and mailed the letter while Gorman watched me from the window.

Well, I was coming along. I had collected four hundred and fifty iron men for nothing so far, and they were where neither of these guys could reach them.

All the same I didn’t like the easy way Gorman had parted with the money. I knew I wouldn’t have screwed it out of Parker. But Gorman was a lot trickier than Parker. When he had parted with the money, his face had been expressionless. But that didn’t fool me. I began to think it was going to be a lot harder to collect the balance of the money when I had handed over the compact. I was all right now, but the moment I had handed it over I had a feeling Gorman would go into action. I felt it the way you feel a hunch, and it kept growing. I remembered what Max had said about Parker’s gun. Right now they wanted me to do a job Gorman was too fat to do and Parker hadn’t the guts to do. But when I’d done it, I’d be of no further use to them. I’d be a danger to them. That’s when I should have to watch out. And I told myself I’d watch out all right.

Later, Max came to tell me lunch was ready. I was sitting on the terrace overlooking the lawn, and when I was going to speak to him he frowned a warning.

I glanced over my shoulder and there was my pal Parker standing in the French windows watching us. He came over, a little stiff, but controlled.

“I have everything you need for tonight,” he said when Max had gone away. “I’ll come with you as far as the wall and I’ll wait there in the car.”

“Come in with me. You can take care of the dog.”

He ignored this, and we went into the dining room. The lunch was nothing to rave about. While we toyed with the food, Parker told me what he had got together for me.

“You’ll want a knotted rope for the wall. I have that with a hook at one end. I have a good pair of cutters for the wire. You’ll need a flashlight. Anything else?”

“How about the dog?”

“A leaded cane will take care of the dog,” Gorman put in. “I’ll tell Max to get one.”

“And the combination of the safe?”

“I’ve written that down for you,” Parker said. “You’ll find a wire running along the side of the safe. Before you touch the safe, cut the wire. That’ll put the alarm out of action. Don’t touch any of the windows.”

“Sounds simple, doesn’t it?” I said.

“For a man of your experience it is simple,” Gorman said smoothly. “But don’t take any chances, Mr. Jackson. I don’t want any trouble.”

“That makes two of us,” I said.

After lunch I told them I’d take a nap in the garden, and that’s when I met Veda Rux. I went down to the lily pond hoping I’d run into her and that’s where I found her. She was sitting on the low wall surrounding the pond the way she had been sitting the previous night. Her feet in sandals hung a few inches above the water. She wore a pair of canary-colored corduroy slacks and a thin silk shirt of the same color. Her almost black hair hung loose to her shoulders in a kind of Dutch bob, only she had waves in it. She was small and compact and curved, and there was strength in her. It wasn’t that she was muscular; it was something you guessed at rather than saw. You had the impression her wrists had steel in them and the curve of her thighs would be as hard as granite if you touched them.

Her face was pale and small and serious. Her lapis-lazuli eyes were alert and watchful. Plenty of girls have pretty faces and curves you can’t improve upon. You look them over, get ideas about them, and forget them as soon as they’re out of sight. But this girl you wouldn’t forget. Don’t ask me why. She had something. She was as different as gin is to water. And the difference, as you know, is there’s a kick in one of them. Veda Rux carried a kick like a mule.

As soon as I saw her I knew there was going to be trouble. If I’d had any sense I’d have quit there and then. I should have told Gorman I’d changed my mind, given him back his money and got out of this house like a bat out of hell. That would have been the sensible thing to have done. I should have known from the way this girl made me feel that from now on I was going to have only half my mind on my job. And when a guy gets that way he’s leaving himself wide open for a sucker punch. I knew it, and I didn’t even care.

“Hello,” I said. “I’ve heard about you. You walk in your sleep.”

She studied me thoughtfully. No welcome. No smile.

“I’ve heard about you, too,” she said.

That seemed to take care of that. There was a long blank pause while we looked at each other. She didn’t move. It was uncanny how still she could sit: not a blink to show she was alive. You couldn’t even see she was breathing.

“You know why I’m here?” I asked. “You know what I’m going to do?”

“Yes, I know that, too,” she said.

Well, that also took care of that. There didn’t seem much else to say. I looked down into the lily pond. I could see her reflection in the water. She looked good that way, too.

I had the idea I was having the same effect on her as she was having on me. I wasn’t sure, but I had a hunch I had touched off a spark in her, and it wouldn’t need a lot of work to fan it into a flame.

I’ve been around and I’ve known a lot of women in my time. They’ve given me a lot of fun and a lot of grief. Now women are funny animals. You never know where you are with them—they don’t often know where they are with themselves. It’s no good trying to find out what makes them tick. It just can’t be done. They have more moods than an army of cats have lives, and all you can hope for is to spot the mood you’re after when it turns up and step in quick. Hesitate, and you’re a dead duck, unless you’re one of those guys who likes a slow approach that might get you somewhere in a week or a month or even a year. But that’s not the way I like it. I like it quick and sudden: like a shot in the back.

I had come around the pool and was close to her now. She sat like a statue, her hands folded in her lap, and I could smell her perfume; nothing you could put a name to, but nice—heady and elusive.

And all of a sudden my heart was slamming against my ribs and my mouth was dry. I stood close behind her and waited. It was as if I’d got hold of a live wire in my hands and it was pulling me to pieces and I couldn’t let go. Then she turned her head slowly and raised her face. I caught her in my arms and my mouth covered hers. She was in the mood all right. Her mouth was half-open and hard against mine. I felt her breath at the back of my throat. Five seconds—long enough to find out how good she was, with her firm young other hand gripping my arm; then she pushed me away. She had steel in her wrists all right.

We looked at each other. The lapis-lazuli eyes were as unruffled and as impersonal as the lily pond.

“Do you usually work as fast as that?” she asked and touched her mouth gently with slim fingers.

There was a weight on my chest that made me breathless. When I spoke I had a croak in my voice a frog would have envied.

“It seemed the thing to do,” I said. “We might do it again sometime.”

She swung her legs over the wall and stood up. The top of her sleek dark head was a little above my shoulder. She stood very still and straight.

“We might,” she said and walked away. I watched her go. Her slim body was upright and graceful and she didn’t look back. I watched her until she had disappeared into the house, then I sat on the wall and lit a cigarette. My hands were as steady as an aspen leaf.

For the rest of the afternoon I stayed right there by the lily pond. Nothing happened. No one came near me. No one peeped at me from the windows. I had all the time in the world to think out what I was going to do that night, how I was going to evade the guards and the dog, how I was going to climb that wall without being seen, and how I was going to open the safe. But I didn’t think about any of that stuff. I thought about Veda Rux. I was still thinking about her when the sun dropped behind the tall pine trees and the shadows lengthened on the lawn. I was still thinking about her when Parker came out of the house and down to the pond.

I looked at him blankly because he had gone right out of my mind. It was as if he had never existed. That was the effect she had on me.

“You’d better come in now,” he said abruptly. “We’ll run through the final arrangements before we have supper. We want to get off about nine o’clock when the moon’s right.”

We went back into the house. There was no sign of her in the hall or the lounge where Gorman was waiting. I kept listening for sounds of her, but the house was as still and as quiet as a morgue.

“Dominic will carry the dagger,” Gorman said. “When you’re up on the wall he’ll hand it to you. Be careful with it. I don’t want the case scratched.”

Parker gave me a key which he said unlocked the back door. We went over the architect’s plan once more.

“I have another two hundred bucks coming to me before I go in there,” I reminded Gorman. “You can give it to me now if that’s okay with you.”

“Dominic will give it to you at the same time as he gives you the dagger,” Gorman said. “You’ve had too much of my money without working for it, Mr. Jackson. I want some action from you before I part with any more.”

I grinned. “Right, only I don’t go over the wall without it.”

I expected to see her at supper, but she wasn’t there. Halfway through the meal I found I just had to know where she was. I said casually I’d seen a girl in the garden and was that Miss Rux and wasn’t she coming in for a bite of food?

Parker turned a greenish white. His fists clenched until the knuckles seemed to be bursting out of his skin. He started to say something in a voice that was drowned in rage, but Gorman put in quickly, “Don’t excite yourself, Dominic.”

I didn’t like the look of Parker, and I pushed back my chair. He looked mad enough to take a sock at me. I don’t like a guy to sock me when I’m sitting down—even a clown like Parker.

“You’re hired to do a job, Jackson,” Parker said, leaning across the table and glaring at me. “Keep your damned nose out of what doesn’t concern you! Miss Rux doesn’t want anything to do with a cheap crook like you, and I’ll see her wishes are carried out. Don’t bring her name into this conversation!”

Because of what had happened out there by the pond, I didn’t play it the way I should.

“Don’t tell me that number I saw in the fancy pants could fall for a stooge like you,” I said and laughed at him. I had my heel against the rung of the chair and I was about to kick it away and land him a poke in his snout when I found myself looking down the barrel of a .38 police special that had jumped into his hand. Max had said he carried a gun as if he could use it. That draw was the quickest thing outside the movies I’d ever seen.

“Dominic!” Gorman said quietly.

I didn’t move. There was a blank, sightless look in Parker’s washed-out blue eyes that told me he was going to shoot. It was a nasty moment. The gun barrel looked as big as the Brooklyn Battery tunnel and twice as steady. I could see the thin finger taking in the slack on the trigger.

“Dominic!” Gorman shouted and brought his great fist crashing down on the table.

The gun barrel dropped and Parker blinked at me as if he couldn’t understand what had happened. His vacant, bewildered look sent a chill up my spine. This guy was slaphappy. I’d seen that dazed, vacant expression duplicated on a row of faces in the psychopathic ward in the county jail. You couldn’t mistake it once you’d seen it: the face of a paranoiac killer.

“Don’t get excited, Dominic,” Gorman said in his thin, scratchy voice. He hadn’t turned a hair, and I began to understand why he kept telling Parker to take it easy. It was his way of controlling him when he was getting out of hand.

Parker got slowly to his feet, stared at the gun as if he couldn’t understand what it was doing in his hand and walked quietly out of the room.

I took out my handkerchief and touched my forehead with it. I was sweating: not much, but I was sweating.

“You want to watch that guy,” I said evenly. “One of these days they’ll take him away, strapped to a stretcher.”

“You have only yourself to blame, Mr. Jackson,” Gorman said, his eyes cold. “He’s all right if you handle him right. You happen to be the quarrelsome type. Have some more coffee?”

I grinned. “I’m going to have a drink. He was going to shoot. Don’t kid me. You want to take that gun away from him before there’s an accident.”

Gorman watched me pour the drink. There was an empty expression on his fat face.

“You mustn’t take him too seriously, Mr. Jackson. He’s become attached to Miss Rux. I shouldn’t mention her again in your conversation.”

“That guy? And what does she think of him?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with you.”

I took a drink and came back to the table.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said.

At nine o’clock Parker brought the car around to the front door. He was distant and calm and seemed to have got over his little spell.

Gorman came down the steps to see us off.

“Good luck, Mr. Jackson. Parker will give you last-minute instructions. I’ll have your money for you when you return.”

I was looking up at the dark windows hoping to see her and I didn’t pay much attention to what he was saying. She wasn’t there.

“We should be back in a couple of hours,” Parker said to Gorman. I could tell his nerves were jangling by the shake in his voice. “If we’re not, you know what to do.”

“You’ll be back,” Gorman returned. His nerves were in better shape. “Mr. Jackson won’t make a mistake.”

I hoped I wouldn’t. As we drove away into the darkness, I leaned out of the window and looked back at the house. I still couldn’t see her.

CHAPTER FOUR

WE SAT IN THE CAR close to the twelve-foot wall that skirted the back of Brett’s house. It was cold and quiet up there on the mountain, and dark. We couldn’t see the wall or the car or each other. It was as if we were suspended in black space.

“All right,” Parker said softly. “You know what to do. Take your time. Give me a whistle when you’re coming back. I’ll flash a light so you’ll find the rope again.”

I breathed gently into the darkness. Even now I hadn’t decided what to do. I didn’t want to go in there. I knew once I was over the wall, I would have put myself out on a limb, and if I slipped up, the least I could hope for was a stretch in jail. Redfern would fall over himself to put me away. He was only waiting for me to step out of line.

Parker turned on the shaded dashboard lamp. I could see his hands and the shadowy outline of his head and shoulders.

“Here’s the combination of the safe,” he said. “It’s easy to remember. I’ve put it on a card. One full turn to the right, half a turn back, another full turn to the right, and a half turn to the right again. Stop between each turn to give the tumblers a chance to drop into place. Don’t rush it. The only way to open the safe is to wait between each turn.”

He gave me the card.

“How about my dough?” I asked.

“That’s all you think about,” he said with a snarl in his voice. He was wrong there, but it wasn’t the time or the place to tell him about Veda Rux. “Here, take it, and keep your mind on what you’re to do.”

He handed over two one-hundred-dollar bills. I folded them small and put them in my cigarette case. I should have clipped him on the jaw then, shoved him out of the car and driven away, but I wanted to see Veda again. I could still feel her mouth against mine.

“When you’ve opened the safe, you’ll find the compact on the second shelf. You can’t miss it. It’s a small gold case, about half an inch thick. You know the kind—hundreds of women have them. Put the dagger in its place.”

“It would have saved a lot of trouble if that babe had slept with a chain on her ankle,” I said. “You might pass the idea on.”

He opened the car door and slid out into the darkness. I followed. Out in the open I could just make out the top of the wall. We stood listening for a moment or so. There wasn’t a sound. I wondered if the dog was loose on the grounds—just thinking about that dog gave me the shakes.

“Ready?” Parker said impatiently. “We want to get this over before the moon is up.”

“Yeah,” I said and swung the leaded cane. I wished now I carried a gun.

He uncoiled the length of rope, and I took the hook in my hand. At the third throw the hook caught on the wire and held.

“Well, so long,” I said. “Keep your ears open. I may be coming out a damn sight faster than I go in.”

“Don’t make any mistakes, Jackson,” he said. I couldn’t see his face but by the way his voice sounded he was talking through locked teeth. “You won’t get any more money out of us if you don’t bring out that compact.”

“As if I didn’t know,” I said and took hold of the rope. “Got the dagger?”

“I’ll hand it up to you. Be careful with it. Don’t knock it against anything. There mustn’t be a mark on it.”

I climbed up the rope until I reached the wire. My feet gripped one of the knots in the rope and I went to work on the wire with the cutters. The wire was strung tight and I had to watch out it didn’t snap back and slash me. I got it cut after a while.

“Okay,” I said into the darkness and drew myself up until I was sitting astride the wall. I looked toward the house, but it was like looking into a pit a mile deep.

“Here’s the case,” Parker whispered. “Handle it carefully.”

I leaned down, fumbled about until my fingers closed around it.

“I have it,” I said and took it from him. While I was shoving it into my coat pocket, I went on. “It’s as black as a hat down there. It’ll take me some time to locate the way in.”

“No, it won’t,” Parker said impatiently. “There’s a path a few yards from the wall. It’ll take you to the back door. Keep to your right. You can’t go wrong.”

“You’ve really made a study of this thing, haven’t you?” I said, pulling up the rope, and sliding down the other side of the wall into the garden.

I stood in the darkness, my hand against the wall, my feet on the grass verge, and listened. All I could hear was my own breathing and the thump of my heart against my ribs. I had left it late to make up my mind what I was going to do. I had to make a decision now. I could either stay right where I was for a while and then climb back over the wall and tell Parker I couldn’t open the safe or it was too well guarded or something, or I could go ahead and do the job and take a chance of running into the dog and the guards.

Once I had the compact, and if the guards caught me, nothing could save me from Redfern. But I was curious. I was sure the whole setup was phoney. A guy as smart as Gorman wouldn’t be gambling away fifteen hundred bucks to help a woman out of a mess. He wasn’t the type. The compact or whatever it was he wanted out of Brett’s safe was worth a pile of jack. There could be no other explanation. If it was worth money to him, it might be worth money to me. I was sick of San Luis Beach, sick of being pushed around, sick of having no money. If I used my head I might make a killing with this job. I might collect enough dough to take it easy for years. It was worth the gamble. I decided to go ahead.

All this took about five seconds to go through my mind; a second later I was on the path and heading toward the house. I had on rubber-soled shoes and I made less noise than a ghost, and I was listening all the time. I didn’t hurry and I crouched as I moved, the flashlight in one hand and the leaded cane ready for business in the other. After a while I came out of the trees. Away to my left I could make out the shape of the house: a vast black bulk of stone against the sky. No lights showed.

I kept moving, following the path that circled the lawn, and I kept thinking about the wolfhound. It was nervy work walking into that thick darkness—a police dog doesn’t bark. It moves along almost on its belly, very fast and quiet, and the first and last time you know it’s there is when its fangs are tearing your throat out. My shirt stuck to my back, and my nerves were poking out of my skin by the time I reached the end of the path. I was close to the house now. The path led to the terrace steps. I knew from the plan that to reach the back entrance you had to walk along the terrace, up some more steps, along another terrace, pass a row of French windows, around the corner and there you were. Once on the terrace you had as much cover to duck behind as a bubble dancer has when her bubble bursts.