The Poisoners by Donald Hamilton Read Free Book Online

was out, and little Beverly might just as well cut her throat with a dull knife and save Frankie-boy the trouble. Only I wasn’t going to make it that easy for him, so I turned the convertible around and headed it for the airport. I had a little money, enough for a ticket somewhere, and it was better than dying, or having my face smashed into something nobody could look at without puking, like one girl I knew who talked too much…”
    She shivered. After a little, she giggled half-hysterically. “You never figure it could happen to you. Do you know what I mean? You’ve got it made: an apartment, a car, good clothes, furs, jewelry, a bank account, the works, and you think it’s going to last forever. And then, suddenly, you’re on the run with just the rags on your back and the few bucks in your purse and death right behind you… You’ve got to understand how it was, Mr. Helm! You’ve got to understand why I did it!”
    “Tell me,” I said.
    “When I got to the terminal, I caught a glimpse of one of Frankie’s other goons waiting there, and I knew they’d be all around the place. I knew I’d never make it, and then along came a kid off a plane and she wasn’t too big and she had longish red hair kind of like mine. I remembered that Arthur Brown had never seen me. Frankie-boy doesn’t like to mix his pleasure people with his business people any more than he has to. Of course I’d seen a few people in the time I’d been with him, and heard a few things, that’s why he had to shut me up. I’d heard of The Basher and seen him perform in the ring, but we’d never actually met. And I had this… this awful, bright idea how to get them all off my trail, and I bumped into this girl and made with the tears and the sob story…”
    “She fell for it?”
    Beverly drew a long breath. “Sure she fell for it, Mister. I’m a pretty good actress, if I say so myself. If it wasn’t for studio politics… Well, never mind that! Anyway, I talked her into driving me home in the car she’d reserved at a rental agency. I got her to go in to pick up some things for me, things I didn’t dare get myself because my estranged husband, a real maniac, was watching the place, waiting to make trouble if I showed. Something like that, I don’t remember exactly what lies I used. I just made them up as I went along.” The girl closed her eyes briefly and opened them again. “And she went in, a red-haired kid about my size, into my apartment building, and I saw The Basher leave his doorway and go in after her. I got behind the wheel of the rental car and drove like hell away from there.”
    In some respects, I reflected, it wasn’t too unlikely a story. Annette O’Leary had been an inch or two taller than the girl sitting on the bed, and her hair had been a different, more natural, more carroty color, but a man waiting for a slim small redhead to enter a certain building wouldn’t have been making such fine distinctions…
    I said, “Considering the trouble you went to, you don’t seem to have got very far.”
    Beverly was still staring at a spot between her shoes. “How could I?” she breathed. “What do you think I am, a monster? I must have been crazy with fear to do it in the first place, and then I had to know, don’t you see? I had to
know
what I’d done to her. So… so I came back.”
    “How did you learn where Annette had been taken?”
    “It wasn’t hard. It just took some calling from a pay phone this morning, to find the right hospital, but they wouldn’t give out any information. So I went there. I was afraid to call attention to myself by asking questions. I just sat where I could see and hear the people who came to the desk. Finally you came in and asked for her… Was she a good friend of yours?”
    “Pretty good,” I said.
    “I… I’m sorry,” Beverly said. “That’s pretty feeble, isn’t it? But I
am
sorry.”
    “Sure.” I went to my suitcase, on a stand by the wall, and took out a small