Scratch One Page 5

  Carr returned his attention to the paper. It simply didn’t mean anything to him; that was all there was to it. Maybe it was a practical joke. Maybe it was delivered to him by mistake. But he wasn’t going to worry about it.

  He crumpled the message and dropped it on the floor; and allowed his attention to return to the stage. The girl in furs was now down to a fur bikini, and she was trying to make the removal of her bra interesting. It was hopeless. She was old, fat, and quivering, very unsteady on her spike heels. Most of the excitement she generated seemed to be speculation as to whether she would stumble and fall. It was a trip-tease, Carr thought, smiling. He was glad to see her leave the stage.

  A new girl took her place, and immediately the background noise of conversation and clicking glasses died away. This girl was young, black-haired, and deeply tanned; she wore a tight dress of electric green which emphasized her full bust and hips. But it was the way she walked which was so arresting—fluid, slow, relaxed, and sensual. There wasn’t a jerk or a bump in her movements. It was all gentle, sinuous, and very exciting.

  Carr sipped his Scotch, and settled back to watch.

  The girl glided back and forth across the stage, her thighs outlined inside the dress with each step. She had long legs, and smoothly muscular calves. She stopped to run her hands up and down her body, an expectant look on her face. She reached behind to undo her zipper—an action which thrust her breasts forward alarmingly—and shivered out of her dress. It fell to the floor, rustling, and she stepped out of it in a black lace slip.

  The music changed, growing faster and more insistent, as she raised one corner of the slip and removed a stocking from her tanned leg; this was repeated a second time, and one of the men in the audience cheered. She breathed deeply, planted her legs wide, and drew the slip over her head while her torso kept up an unrelenting, twisting movement, almost a writhing.

  Now, in half-bra and brief panties, she increased the speed of her movements. Her body glistened with sweat from her exertion. Carr could feel the entire club being caught in the controlled animal frenzy she radiated. The pace increased; she whipped around, still fluid but very fast, and flung aside her bra. Her firm breasts, large and pink-tipped, caught the light.

  Her fingers ran down her flat belly to her panties, pulling them away, letting them snap back. The muscles in her thighs stood out. Her face was contorted, the eyes wide, the mouth open, the teeth bared. Slowly, inch by inch, the panties came down her long, tapering legs, and were kicked away. She made one final grinding movement with her hips, and then the lights were doused.

  In the darkness, someone banged into a chair at his side. When the lights came on Carr saw a girl standing in front of him, looking down at her feet. She seemed to have stubbed her toe in the dark. Ignoring him, the girl leaned on the table, took off her shoe, and rubbed the injured foot. Her position allowed Carr a generous look at her legs and breasts. She seemed every bit as amply constructed as the girl on the stage. He offered her a drink.

  She accepted, flashing a professionally shy smile as she sat down. Her name, she said, was Suzanne, and she spoke “sam Englesh.” Carr introduced himself, and gave her a cigarette while they waited for drinks.

  She was an attractive girl, small and pert, with enormous dark eyes and short red-blond hair. Her chest was enormous, exposed by her low-cut pink sheath. She was careful to lean across the table when she talked. Did Mr. Carr like Nice?

  Oh yes, Carr said, he did. She gave him a coquettish smile. Where was he from? New York, Carr said, sipping his drink. He felt suddenly very tired—it was a strange feeling, a sort of lost, vague boredom, which struck him only rarely. He didn’t want to continue the conversation, because he knew exactly how it would run. He would ask where she was from—and be told one of the provinces, though she had come to Nice some time ago. The conversation, polite and stereotyped in every country of the world, would ramble on for at least an hour, while he poured drinks into her. Then he would feel free to reach across the table and hold her hand, while he inquired solicitously after her foot. It would no doubt be much improved, and she would demonstrate by rubbing it playfully over Carr’s sock.

  He had a miserable headache.

  They would have more drinks, but decide to leave before the next floor show, each professing boredom with it. Carr would suggest a nightcap somewhere else, and the girl would agree; as they left, he would have a sudden idea—why not a drink in his room? Oh, that would be fine, though Suzanne would protest that it mustn’t be too late a night. Carr would agree, and off they’d go to spend the night. They both understood the rules.

  Suddenly, almost surprised at himself, Carr found himself wanting to leave. He wasn’t interested in this girl, not tonight—that was all there was to it. Searching his mind for an explanation, he decided it was a combination of the time difference (which he had still not adjusted to), the business at the airport, and the crummy dinner. He wanted some aspirin, and a few drinks by himself, and then he wanted to go to sleep.

  There was another girl stripping on stage now, to the clash of cymbals. It was a noisy act. The girl was attended by two musclebound men in leopard skins who caught her when she fell into their arms, which was often. The stripper had a nondescript body, a bland smile on her face, and a general expression of trancelike boredom.

  Suzanne ignored the stage. She’s probably seen it a hundred times, Carr thought. He tried to listen to her happy, cheerful conversation, tried to answer questions about himself. She wanted to visit the United States someday. Yes, marvelous. She must look him up if she was ever in New York…

  After half an hour, when Suzanne excused herself, he gave her fifty francs for the “washroom attendant,” paid the bill, and left before she returned.

  He was deep in thought as he walked back along the dark streets of the town. He wondered if he were getting too old for this kind of thing, if his wild bachelor life had finally caught up with him. He was still wondering when he noticed that he was lost.

  Carr had paid too little attention to the way he was going and now he was somewhere back from the water, in an area he did not know. Swearing softly, he looked around, and saw one of the blond men from the nightclub approaching. Christ, that was all he needed now—a fairy bothering him. He ducked down a dark alley, and walked quickly away.

  That, he thought, should lose him.

  But moments later, when he paused, he heard footsteps on the pavement behind. Almost immediately, the footsteps stopped, as if they had been caught in an illegal act. It made Carr shiver. Suddenly, he was no longer interested in merely avoiding an unpleasant encounter; suddenly, he was afraid. Something was wrong, something was very sinister and wrong. He began to run.

  Behind him, running footsteps. Or was he imagining it? He didn’t dare stop to check. Perhaps he was making it all up, perhaps he was being ridiculous. But somehow he didn’t think so. He sprinted forward and came out on a brightly lighted main street, where he stood under a streetlamp, winded, gasping for breath.

  He grabbed the first taxi he saw and jumped in quickly. As it pulled away from the curb, he saw the blond man emerging from the narrow street. The man had been running, too—his chest was heaving as he watched the cab draw away. It was the big man, the ugly muscular one. What was going on?

  “Où, monsieur?”

  “Negresco,” Carr said, turning away from the window.

  “Of course, sir.” The accent was cultivated. It was a pleasant surprise, Carr thought, to find drivers who spoke English so well.

  “In the future,” the driver said, “you will obey instructions. Did you get the message?”

  “Yes,” Carr said slowly. He was startled. “But I—”

  The cabby sighed. “You fail to recognize the seriousness of the situation. You are in extreme danger. Your cover is blown; do you understand?”

  “No.”

  “No? It is as clear as day. Do you need pictures?”

  “Yes,” Carr said. This was incredible. It was
beginning to be a kind of nightmare world in which nothing was agreed upon, and nobody played a fixed role, and the unexpected always happened. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “Who am I?” The voice was shocked, disbelieving.

  “Yes. Is that such a strange question?”

  “That is an idiotic question.” The cab drew up in front of the Negresco. The doorman opened it. Carr dug in his pocket for change.

  “Make no calls from your room,” the cabby said, counting his money in the roof light of his car. “Lock your door, and wedge it. And go to you-know-where in the morning. Bon soir.”

  Carr watched the cab pull away. He felt paralyzed, totally ridiculous. The doorman was staring at him. Carr was staring at the taxi.

  “You have left something in the car, monsieur?”

  “No, no, nothing.”

  The doorman nodded, as if to say, “I knew it all along. You are just a crazy American who does things for no reason.” But his only words were, “Very good, sir.”

  Carr went inside to the bar.

  The bar of the Negresco was a large room with a high ceiling. It was paneled in dark polished wood, and the floor was wood of the same color. Persian rugs in red and blue were scattered about, and the chairs, arranged around low tables, were upholstered in red and blue leather. There was a balcony running around the room, above the bar, supported by large white pillars.

  The bar itself was crowded as Carr sat down on one of the square stools to have a gimlet. For a while, he tried to concentrate on the conversation around him, but it was dull, and he gave up. He thought about himself, tried to figure out what was going on, and had three more drinks.

  Feeling sleepy and rather drunk, he climbed off the stool and worked his way through the people toward the door, not paying much attention to anything. He stumbled into a girl at the door, knocking her purse out of her hands.

  “Sorry,” he said stupidly, and bent to pick up the purse. It was large, alligator, and expensive. The initials in gold lettering said AC. He handed the purse back, looking briefly at the girl, who was blond, rather beautiful, and sneering.

  “Apologies,” said the girl coldly, “are seldom of any use.”

  “That’s not original,” Carr replied, annoyed with her. He had said he was sorry, for Christ’s sake. What did she want?

  “Who said it was original?” she said, but her eyebrows had gone up.

  “Garrick, maybe,” Carr said. In a fog, he stumbled toward the elevator.

  The lights were on in his room. That was a surprise. The covers had been turned back on the bed. That was another surprise. Somebody was lying on the bed. That was a third surprise, more than enough surprises for one night, as far as Roger Carr was concerned. He dropped into a chair and stared at Suzanne, lying fully clothed on his sheets.

  “Comfortable?” he asked.

  She giggled.

  Carr rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. After a point, you just had to give up and admit you were insane. There was no earthly reason why she should be here, why she should know he was staying here, why she should be able to get into his room, why she should want to get into his room. After all, he had ditched her, quite firmly and rudely.

  She giggled again.

  “Are you all right? You keep making funny noises.”

  “Why deed you leave me?”

  “I was tired,” he said. The accent was getting him down. He wanted to go to sleep.

  “How tired?”

  “Too tired,” he said, a little sharply.

  “I do not beelieve you.” She sat up in bed, and began undressing.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because …” She paused reflectively, a hand on her zipper. “Because I do not.”

  “Fine.” He needed aspirin. His head was spinning. He staggered into the bathroom for a glass of water.

  “Do not go,” she said, pouting. She was half out of her dress, and she looked good. Any other time, he thought. Any other time.

  He ran water in the basin, and waited for it to get cold. She came into the bathroom after him, stripped bare, her hands supporting her large breasts. Through her fingers, he could see the pointed nipples protruding.

  “I see you have a living bra,” he said weakly.

  She leaned back, flexing the muscles in her legs. The stomach was flat, the waist firm; her thighs were slim for such a short girl. The outline of a brief bikini was imprinted in white.

  “You don’t like me?”

  “I adore you,” he said, hanging his head over the sink. Oh God, was he going to be sick?

  “Good!” She ran to him and flung her arms around him, pressing up against him. He staggered backward, and fell into the bathtub. It took several minutes to get her off him, and himself out of the tub. When he was standing again, he gently pushed her into the bedroom. The water was still running in the sink.

  She apparently interpreted his pushing her into the bedroom as capitulation, because she drew him down onto the bed and slid a hot tongue between his lips. She placed his hands over her nipples.

  He pulled back, woozy. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. Just let me get an aspirin first. I have a headache, you see.”

  She clung to him. “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” He had a feeling he had had this same conversation just a short time before. But he couldn’t remember exactly. Everything was fuzzy.

  “I do not want you to do that. I do not trust pills.”

  “Why not? It’s only aspirin. You know, as-pee-reen. Comprenez?”

  She sighed breathlessly, and ran her hands up his back.

  “Stay here. Talk to me.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “Many things.”

  “Suzanne,” he said firmly, pushing her back. “The last thing I want to do is talk. First, I want an aspirin, then I want—”

  Something appeared in her hand. He thought he recognized it.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “A gun.”

  He stared stupidly, wondering where it had come from. After all, she wasn’t wearing anything. Christ, he thought, I must be drunk.

  “Does it work?”

  “Bien sûr.”

  He nodded. It figured: she didn’t look like a girl who would fool with a rod that didn’t work.

  The water was still running in the sink. He could hear it.

  “Talk to me,” she said.

  “What about?”

  “You know what. Tell me.”

  “Tell you what?” He was practically shouting. And then he felt ridiculous. The whole thing was ridiculous. It had been an absurd day. This floozy wasn’t going to shoot him. He got calmly out of bed and walked into the bathroom.

  “I’m getting my aspirin. Be back in a minute.”

  She said nothing, but her hand was trembling. Feeling very cool, he took a glass off the shelf over the sink and filled it. The water was loud. He thought he heard a door open, but decided it was his imagination.

  He swallowed the aspirin noisily, and turned off the tap. He walked back into the other room.

  “Listen, Suzanne, you’re a swell girl, but I really—”

  He stopped. She was gone.

  “Suzanne?”

  He walked around the room, and looked in the closet

  “Suzanne? Don’t play games.”

  He went out to the balcony, and stared for a minute down at the traffic coursing by on the Promenade des Anglais. The night was peaceful and quiet.

  When he went back into his room, she still did not reappear. Had he imagined the whole incident? Was he dreaming?

  No.

  Her underwear was all over the floor. Not her dress—just her underwear. That was damned funny. He picked up her bra. It was an awfully big bra. Poor Suzanne. She must have remembered something very important to make her rush off without her bra.

  His head was buzzing again. The day h
ad been too much for him, and the gimlets had finished him off. There was only one thing to do, and that was sleep.

  He hoped, as he lay down on the bed, that he would not dream.

  Chapter VI

  THINGS SEEMED BETTER IN the morning. Clear, bright sunlight poured into his room, and he awoke feeling normal, and almost happy. Of course, Suzanne’s underwear and stockings were flung all over the floor, but if you could ignore that, you could manage to believe that all of yesterday, from the bomb in the airplane to the naked girl with the gun, had been one horrible mistake.

  In fact, Carr decided, that was the only way to look at it. As he shaved and dressed, the only thought occupying his mind was whether he could get decent scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast.

  In Nice-Cimiez, the fashionable northern suburb of the city, Dr. Liseau sat behind his desk and buzzed his secretary on the intercom.

  “When is my first appointment?”

  “Madame Dallois, at ten-thirty.”

  He glanced at his watch. It would give him an hour. “Hold all calls until then.”

  “Yes, doctor.”

  He snapped off the intercom and turned to Brauer.

  “You have the tape?”

  The blond man shifted in his chair, and withdrew a five-inch spool from his jacket pocket. “I thought you should hear it for yourself.”

  Deftly, Liseau threaded the tape onto a portable recorder and clicked it on. He sat back in his chair to listen.

  There were scratching noises for fifteen seconds, and then the sound of a telephone ringing. A voice said, “Dix-huit heures quinze minutes.”

  The phone rang three times, and then was picked up with a metallic scrape.

  “Roger Carr speaking.”

  “Mr. Carr.”

  “Yes?”

  “I would like to meet with you.”

  “Yes?”

  “I believe I can be of great use to you.”

  “In what way?”

  “I can help you in your business.”

  “What do you know about my business?”

  “I know all about your business, I’m afraid.”

  “I see. You have a villa to sell?”