Murderers' Row Read Online Free Page A

reasonably well-groomed as long as they can stay on their feet and keep their stockings up. She was obviously loaded, sure, but at first glance she looked just like an attractive suburban housewife who’d overestimated her capacity at somebody’s cocktail party and would be dreadfully embarrassed in the morning, wondering if anybody’d noticed.
    Upon further examination, of course, I could see that the attractive picture was terribly out of focus in a very fundamental way. This wasn’t just a pretty woman who’d had one too many, slightly rumpled, apologetic, and appealing. This was—or seemed to be—a real lush, going downhill fast.
    â€œHello, Jean,” I said, coming forward.
    She waited for me to reach her, and looked up. Most women have to, even the tall ones, and she wasn’t very tall. She had soft, light-brown hair, a little mussed now, and bright, baby-blue eyes, a little bloodshot. Her hands made a clumsy, mechanical gesture towards tidying the hair, while the eyes searched my face.
    I guess she’d been wondering what kind of a guy would be sent to do the job friend Alan had turned down. She’d agreed to have the operation, but she wanted to know that the surgeon was a capable man. It was a reasonable attitude; but she looked hard enough and long enough for me to wonder if she’d forgotten her lines. Then she moistened her lips with her tongue, and said, as she was supposed to, “Who—who are you?”
    â€œNever mind names,” I said. “You can call me Eric if you like. A man in Washington asked me to look you up. He’s disappointed in you, Jean, very disappointed indeed.”
    â€œWhat—what do you want?”
    There was a nice note of drunken apprehension in her voice, but she shouldn’t have worn those pearls. Close up, I could see that they were too big and perfect to be real, just costume jewelry; nevertheless their luster made her skin look gray and tired. Well, maybe that was the idea.
    I felt very sorry for her. The worst assignments aren’t the ones requiring you to do something nasty; the worst assignments are the ones demanding that you be something nasty, maybe for weeks or months at a time. I’d been through it myself, and I knew the humiliation she must be feeling, seeing herself through a sober stranger’s eyes: a sloppy, swaying figure of disintegration and decay. One day, she’d be thinking, one day I’ll show this supercilious jerk what I’m really like—that is if I can ever be human again.
    It was hard to remember that this unpleasant playacting had a purpose, that it was necessary because a certain man was thought to be held somewhere for eventual transport overseas, with knowledge in his head that threatened the national security. It was hard to remember that this woman, who looked hardly capable of putting herself to bed, was supposed to reach Dr. Norman Michaelis, somehow, and either rescue or destroy him before he could be made to talk about an invention with the unlikely name of AUDAP.
    I didn’t have any faith in her chances of effecting a rescue single-handed, and I doubted that she did. That left her pretty well committed to the unpleasant alternative, after which she was supposed to get away—extricate herself, as Mac had put it—to tell us all about it. If she couldn’t make it, she knew what to do. In the armed forces, you’re supposed to be brave, if captured, and tell nothing under any circumstances but your name, rank, and serial number. We’re not required to be that brave, thank God. We’re merely required to kill ourselves.
    It wasn’t a future to which anyone would look forward with joy, and I could understand the resignation in her blue eyes. I spoke the lines I had been given to memorize.
    â€œI think you know what I want, Jean. I’m sorry, I really am. Everybody goes through bad periods. It’s a lousy, dirty business, and we