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and
KILL
ONCE
MORE
AL FRAY
A GRAPHIC ORIGINAL, 1955
All characters in this work are fictitious
and any resemblance to persons living
or dead is coincidental.
Copyright 1955 by
Graphic Publishing Company, Inc.
Hasbrouck Heights, N.J.
Cover by Saul Levine
One
I LAY on the Santa Monica strand and watched lazy fall breakers pile in. Each long slow wave rolled shoreward, mounting higher and higher until at last the crest toppled over and crashed toward me in a broad curtain of white foam, then spent itself on the sand and washed silently back into the surf. Hungry sandpipers followed the backwash, their long needle-like beaks darting into the wet sand in search of an early snack. A squadron of gulls wheeled overhead and morning sunlight gave a sparkle to the blue Pacific, a glitter which, for me at least, has never lost its attraction. I stood up, stretched, weighed the empty feeling in my stomach against the lure of salt water and decided on another dip before breakfast.
The water had just enough snap to feel right. I splashed through the surf, knifed into a seven foot wall of white and came up on the other side. Working easily out a hundred yards, I rolled over and lay on the swells, my thoughts on the beach and how things were and how they might go on being for quite a while. Summer had gone the way of a lot of other summers; now it was October. Next month the inn at Death Valley would open and I’d hold forth as combination lifeguard and swimming instructor for the winter season, then knock off for another vacation and when warm weather brought the multitude down to the ocean there would be a job for Marty Bowman.
A nice life—until there comes a day when you begin to wonder if thirty-one isn’t getting a little old for a beach boy and wouldn’t it be smart to look around for something a bit more permanent. But thinking back over some of the other times I’d tried to make the break brought a smile to my face. There was that fall I took a job punching rivets in an aircraft plant. Not too hard, a nice clean, respectable spot but somewhere along the second week I figured out that at the rate of one every ten seconds I was forty million rivets from retirement and that’s just too damn many rivets. I asked for my time and caught on with a plunge down in Palm Springs for the rest of the winter.
And there have been other times, other jobs I’ve taken and some I tried for without success but somehow I always wind up wearing swimming trunks, dark glasses, and a towel over my shoulders. Maybe the real reason I can’t get interested in running a drill press is that in the back of my mind there’s a picture of the enterprise I hope to launch some day. A small but classy pool well located on the fringes of Beverly Hills, perhaps, and set up to skim off some of the easy dough spilling out of pockets in that area. Swimming lessons for small fry during the day and party rental at night—work I could really enjoy and at the same time lay away a buck or so, and. . . .
Vaguely I was aware that the pounding of the surf had increased and the swells had carried me toward the beach. I turned and stroked along ahead of a rising crest, caught it breaking, and rode all the way in. When it petered out under me and dribbled back toward the sea I jogged up onto the dry sand, caught up my towel and went toward my small beach cottage. Before I opened the door I heard the phone ringing. I went inside, crossed the narrow hallway, dropped the towel on the carpet, stepped on it and picked up the phone.
“Marty Bowman,” I said.
“Marty? Boreland Gregory.” He let that soak in for a second, then said, “Marty, I have an assignment for you. A client is with me now, a young lady who seems to have a rather unusual problem. It’s your type of thing and I’d like you to handle it.”
I stood there, the phone in my hand and salt water dripping onto the towel. There couldn’t be any mistake. Boreland Gregory was my brother’s boss and the few times Gregory had dialed my number it was in an effort to locate Fred. Now Gregory was calling me. He had used my first name slowly and deliberately. Twice.
“Hold on,” I said. “I just came up from the beach and I’d better dry off.”
But I wasn’t worried about a few drops of water. I needed time to square this one away. Somebody was obviously right at Gregory’s elbow. He couldn’t say what he wanted to say, couldn’t make any explanations. Over the wire I heard his voice again, low this time as though he’d turned away. “How’s that for service, Miss Weston? Our man Bowman just came out of the water.”
If the Miss Weston in his office answered I didn’t hear her but I was getting a line on things. Gregory had a Bowman on his staff all right but it wasn’t me. Fred has been an ace investigator with the Gregory Agency for a dozen years and once tried to grease the chute there for me. He arranged an interview and I went down, but the deal didn’t jell. We’d gotten along fine until Boreland Gregory tilted back in his heavy oak chair, fixed a shrewd eye on my face and asked how he could be sure, after investing his time and money to train me for his work, that it wouldn’t all go slipping down the drain when summer came and the beaches called. I didn’t try to kid him. I said he couldn’t be sure at all and right about then he lost interest in adding Marty Bowman to his payroll.
Two years ago, that was, but now things had suddenly changed. Now Gregory was making a noise like a man who was over the barrel. It was obvious he needed somebody who owned more than one pair of trunks, you might say, and I thought about the month I had to kill before the inn opened and decided against giving him the kiss-off.
“You’re getting through to me,” I said softly. “What can you tell me over the phone? What do we do about—”
“Fine,” he cut in. “We’ll take care of the odds and ends when you get here. Just pack a bag and hurry down to the office. Miss Weston is due at a house party on the desert, Marty, but she’s a little worried. Needs help on a couple of matters. You’re going as a guest, so put some swimming trunks into a suitcase and be on your way. You might take about what you’d want for a nice weekend in a first class resort, but don’t forget those trunks. Got that?”
“The swimming trunks,” I echoed softly. “Yes, I think I get the picture, Mr. Gregory. I’ll be there as soon as possible—about twenty minutes. Anything else?”
“She’ll wait for you, Marty. Make it fast.”
The phone clicked and I cradled it, then hit for the shower. Hot water splashed across my shoulders and washed away the salt while I did a mental retake on the fragment of a picture Boreland Gregory had given me, and five minutes later I climbed into my four-year-old coupe, whipped over onto Wilshire Boulevard and headed toward Hollywood. Gregory’s agency is on the second floor in a building just off the celebrated corner, so I found a parking spot on Vine and walked back.
Before I got to the entrance a familiar voice greeted me. “Hi, kid. Or should I call you lucky?”
I turned toward the curb and saw my brother Fred leaning against a light blue Cadillac with gleaming wire wheels. “Delayed action?” I asked. “Two years ago I hit fat boy for a job and today it comes through. You sure I’m lucky?”
Fred gave me an envious grin.
