Page 24 of Passion's Wicked Torment

“He’s faking, damn it! You and Ladislas Terry, what a bunch of dunces. Of course he’s making out as if he can’t remember anything. That’s the smartest thing he can do. He figures that if we fall for it, we’ll stop trying to get that name from him.”

“Yeah, but, boss, he’s been like this for two weeks now, and Terry can’t get anything out of him, no matter what he does to him.”

Kristin winced at this, and she almost cried out. What were they doing to her brother? God, she wanted to rush in there and kill them! Were they . . . torturing him? She had to find out where they were keeping him so she could arrange to have him rescued. She had to!

“Listen, Arthur, I’m working on the situation. I’ve got so many men out in California, trying to track down his sister, Molly, that she’s bound to turn up sooner or later. Then we’ll get what we want out of him. He’ll stop pretending he lost his memory when he sees her in front of him, getting beaten silly.”

“But, boss, T.J. was the only one who got a good look at her. The others said it all happened too fast. All they remember is that she was a doll and had beautiful, really long hair. So we may not find her soon enough to—”

“We’ll find her, damn you!”

Kristin felt frightened. They were actually looking for her! Under her full name, Molly K. Fleming. Evidently they didn’t know that she had been called by nothing but her middle name ever since she was a child. Kristin’s mind was reeling at the realization of how close a call she had had. If she hadn’t told everyone she was going off to California to live with relatives, and then secretly joined Dallas as his moll, they would have captured her just a few days after Chad!

Well, if they hadn’t found her real identity out by now, they probably never would. They certainly wouldn’t learn anything from trying to track down her grandparents in California. There weren’t any grandparents in California. She had invented them to make her disappearance plausible.

Ironman said something she wasn’t able to catch, then Arthur Teal said in a plaintive voice, “Boss, we got to get him out of there! The heat is really on. The cops ain’t looking for him; for some reason the investigation was closed down tight. But the feds, boss, the feds! They’re nosing around all over the place. Can’t we just kill him?”

Ironman thought a moment. Then he said, “I’ll go down and visit him myself. I want to see about this loss of memory nonsense. I know about this doctor who got drummed out of the profession for boozing it up. He’s a head doctor, a follower of this Viennese crackpot whose theories have been in all the papers lately.”

“Sigmund Fred,” offered Teal.

“Yeah, him. He’s a follower of him. Freud, not Fred. So I’ll take this follower of his with me when I visit the reporter. He’ll be able to tell if he’s on the level or not. I’ll go visit our reporter friend day after tomorrow. Meantime, since the heat’s on, I want you to move him to. . . .”

Kristin’s ear was plastered to the heating grille, but just then, something unfortunate happened. Just as Ironman spoke the words of the new place Chad was to be moved to, he began playing the piano! Kristin felt like screaming. She couldn’t hear! He was talking about where Chad was going to be held, and she couldn’t hear!

She rushed to the door and flung it open. Ironman and Teal both turned to look at her. She tried to make herself seem calm and casual, but failed. Her tension and anxiety must have shown on her face, for Ironman looked at her warily, quizzically. “What’s with you?” “I ... I want to have that drink now.”

He stared at her for an instant, but then his face broke into a smile, and he laughed. “Whatever it is you been reading in that magazine, you ought to stop. What’s it about, anyway, lost pets?” He turned to Teal. “She’s real soft on lost pets. You should have seen her when we saw this stray dog that almost got run over on the street.”

Teal was looking at her suspiciously. “Yeah?” he said. “I guess that really gets to her, huh?”

Kristin made herself smile. “I was reading a very sexy article about the movie star Guy Faraday, and it made me think of you.” She went to Ironman and ran her finger down his chest, forcing a seductive look on her face. It worked. He brightened instantly, and his eyes came alive.

He grasped her finger and looked her straight in the eyes. “Very soon, doll. Very soon.” He had Teal pour her a brandy with cream. Then he spanked her playfully as he directed her back toward the bedroom.

“Do I have to go back in there?” she asked, trying to hide her desperation. She put on a pout. “It’s so . . . lonely.”

Ironman sighed. “Naw. I don’t think so. Go on, sit down. Why don’t you finish putting some of those figures in the ledger book. We’ll be done soon.”

Kristin went to a table near the veranda windows and sat down. She opened the large green ledger book and began entering figures in it from slips of paper containing yesterday’s receipts from Ironman’s operations. She had been doing this for him for the past few days, since he himself detested the drudgery of it. Her mind was not on the figures she was entering, though, but on Ironman, as she hoped desperately that he would continue talking about where Chad was to be taken.

Ironman returned to the piano and began bumbling on the keys. He glanced at Kristin with happiness and hunger in his eyes. He turned to Teal and said, “So you just keep doing like I told you to, right?”

“Yeah, boss. Right.”

“And then day after tomorrow me and my doll here,” he said, indicating Kristin, “will go on a short trip to my pride and joy. And then I’ll take a few minutes to go downstairs and visit our guest.”

“Are we going somewhere?” Kristin asked with studied nonchalance, looking up from her ledger. “Where?”

Ironman winked. “You’ll find out, doll. You’ll love it.” He turned back to Teal and continued his discussion. Kristin was in agony. She wanted to push it, but she knew that if she did, he would become suspicious. His “pride and joy,” that’s where he said they were going. Where was that? What was it? She’d find out in two days. Day after tomorrow, he said. That was when he would visit Chad. She’d find out where he was being held at last!

“All right, Arthur. Is there anything else you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Hunter and his men are raiding Rooney’s numbers racket on Lindyras Street, like you told ’em. Not shooting anybody up, just grabbing the betting slips and terrorizing the place. Without the slips, Rooney won’t know who bet on what; so his customers can all claim winners, and he’ll have to pay ’em off. Or get them all angry by not paying off the legit winners. Hunter wants to know what to do with the slips. I didn’t know what you had in mind for that, so I told him to come here after and bring ’em to you.”

At that, Ironman flew into a rage, leaping up from his piano bench, grabbing Teal by the shirt front. “Here?! You told him to come here? I told you never to have Hunter come here!”

Teal was shocked and amazed by the outburst. When he tried to speak, he stuttered. “Y-you never told me, boss. Maybe you told someone else, but you never told me."

Ironman realized that he was showing his jealousy by acting in such a fashion in front of Kristin. He glanced at her and saw that she was watching him intently. He made an effort to get control of himself again. He let Teal go, releasing his shirt. He began patting off his clothes, as if trying to undo the damage. “All right. I must have told Riggio, but not you.”

Teal clearly wanted to ask what the big deal was, why should Ironman get so upset over having Hunter come over. But he did not dare. Ironman had a flash fire temper, which his keymen quickly learned not to mess with. Anytime they discovered a subject that set him off, they made sure never to mention it again.

Teal could not know how insanely jealous Ironman was of Hunter. Kristin knew. Ironman believed that they secretly still cared for each other deeply, and absolutely nothing she could say could convince him otherwise. He went to great pains to keep the two of them apart.

Kristin had only s

een Hunter once since they had been arrested together after that time on the island, and even then Ironman had been clearly upset about it. It had been at an earlier ball he gave for his political cronies, and he could not very well have left his key henchman off the invited list. Hunter had ignored Kristin totally, and she had ignored him equally as well, refusing to even look in his direction. Ironman had been curt and had barely treated Hunter civilly.

“Well, I better go, huh, boss?” Teal was unnerved by the display of anger, not understanding its cause.

“No, you stick around. Have another drink.” Ironman tried to seem more jovial, but he failed dismally. He glanced at Kristin, who quickly turned her eyes away, not wanting to confront him over his jealousy. He could not be reasoned with about it, she knew. The best thing she could do was to just let him cool off by himself. In fact, she thought, the smart thing to do was to leave the room so that she was not here when Hunter came, so Ironman would not have any cause to be further provoked.

She got up and started toward the bedroom.

“Where are you going?” His voice was not friendly.

“I thought I’d he down for a while. I’ve got a headache.”

“You sure you’re not just worried about making me jealous? You don’t have to worry about me, doll. I ain’t jealous. Of Dallas Hunter? Ha! What a laugh that is.” He was so defensive about it, he almost could not think straight. “You sit right where you are,” he ordered. “You don’t have to worry about Ironman Mike Gianelligetting jealous over any two-bit hood who I can buy and sell ten times over.”

She shrugged and sat down again at the table. She leaned over to the console radio and flicked on the dial. Ironman stalked over and shut the radio off. He stood there, fuming, staring at her. He was impossible when he became so oversensitive.

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