She stared up at him from the floor, an incredulous fear in her eyes. Horace bent over and caught her by the hair. He jerked her to a sitting position.
“Don’t,” Lucy whimpered. Her hand came up protectively in front of her face. Horace knocked it aside.
“Who is he?” Horace said, the new deadliness in his voice.
When Lucy didn’t answer immediately, he slapped her, not as hard as before, but hard enough to make her ears ring.
“Please,” Lucy begged. “He’s … he’s my first husband.”
She saw the surprise in his eyes and the hesitation. “He didn’t know I was coming here,” she blurted. “I just … wanted to see him, that’s all.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know. I was going to.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not,” Lucy said quickly. “Please. You’re hurting me.
Slowly he released her hair. He stood erect, glaring down at her.
“Why did you want to see him?”
“I don’t know. We were married for two years. And when we were coming this way, I just thought I’d like to see him again.”
“You thought you’d like to have a little roll with him—just for old time’s sake. Didn’t you?” he raged.
“No!” She was badly frightened now.
“I ought to kill both of you!”
“No, Horace!” She scrambled to her feet and grabbed his arms, pressing herself against him. “He doesn’t mean anything to me. Honey! He doesn’t!”
“You’re lying.”
“No, no, I’m not.” She licked her lips. She wanted him to believe her. It was very important that he should believe her, and not just because she was scared.
“He’s in love with this girl in the office,” she said quickly. “They’re going to get married. It was all over between him and me a long time ago. Honest, Horace!”
Horace stared at her for a long moment. Then he took her by the arms, and the blunt fingers gripped her like steel bands.
“Get this,” he said. “Get this straight. You’re my wife. Ever since we got married you’ve been pushing yourself out at every thing in pants. You’re not going to do it any more.”
“No, honey,” she said eagerly. “I didn’t mean anything—”
“Shut up,” he said, very quietly, and she shut up instantly. “I’m sorry I hit you. But that was only a sample. You play around behind my back, and I’ll break you in two. You hear me?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Nobody plays me for a sucker,” Horace Stockwell said.
He turned away abruptly and walked back to the window. Lucy stared at his back, in her eyes a mingling of fear and awe—and a dawning, wondering respect. He meant it. He meant exactly what he said.
Lucy’s fingers came up to her face and touched it tenderly. She felt an emotion that was new to her, and yet not completely new, strangely familiar. Unexpectedly she had a vivid memory of her father—that big, red-faced man, incredibly strong, the smell of whiskey harsh on his breath, holding her high above his head in his great hands, laughing with a thunderous, terrifying violence, while she felt the delicious mingling of terror and excitement as he held her high and then brought her down with a frightening swoop that brought her heart up to her throat and made her cry out, and then he would crush her against his huge chest, muffling her cries.
Remembering, Lucy stared at Horace Stockwell’s thick back, and she felt again the tingling pressure of his fingers on her arm. This was a man, she thought wonderingly. This was someone she had lived with without knowing. And suddenly she knew there would be no more playing around behind Horace’s back—not with Art, not with anybody. Strangely, the knowledge did not displease her.
Suddenly the lights in the motel went out, both in the unit and outside, plunging the entire motel into darkness. Lucy crep forward and stood behind Horace. Tentatively she put a hand on his arm.
“Honey?”
He didn’t move, and he didn’t answer.
“Honey, what’s happening?”
His face turned toward hers. “What’s the matter?” he asked coldly. “You afraid your boy friend will get hurt?”
The question stung her, and Lucy felt tears brimming at her eyes. “No,” she said. “Honey, he’s just a good guy. And I walked out on him. He’s got a right to hate me. That’s why I wanted to see him.”
“You’re just sentimental,” he sneered. Then, after a pause, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I knew you’d be mad. That’s all. He was just a good guy, and—”
“All right,” Horace said. “So he’s a good guy.”
“If I was in love with him,” Lucy said, “I wouldn’t have walked out on him. Would I?”
Horace stared at her. “Maybe,” he said.
“It was never like it is with you and me,” Lucy said, gaining confidence. “I love you, honey. I couldn’t ever walk out on you.”
“You’re damned right you couldn’t.”
“I don’t want to,” Lucy said. And she meant it.
She leaned against him, and her arms stole over his shoulders. He let her kiss him. He didn’t respond, but he didn’t push her away. She stopped kissing him, but she still clung to him. He looked at her a moment. Then he stared out through the blind at the dark courtyard.
“I wonder what in hell is going on out there,” he said.
29
In the dim light, Cutter recognized the young girl too late. His finger was already squeezing the trigger. Only the tall girl’s scream and lunge saved the kid coming out of the bathroom. It was the scream more than anything else, shrilling so close that it almost deafened him, and his gun hand wavered. The shot exploded almost in the tall girl’s face as she plunged toward him. The bullet went high and wide, smashing into the door frame above and to the left of the kid’s head.
Cutter slashed at the dark-haired girl with the gun, feeling the barrel hit bone. The force of the blow, catching her almost in mid-air, knocked her off the bed and onto her back on the floor.
Cutter was already moving toward the young girl, who stood trembling in the bathroom doorway. Even in the darkness he could see that her face was chalk-white. He grabbed her by the arm and hauled her across the room, pushing her in front of him toward the front window. Now he was for it, he thought with a clear cold anger. Goddamned women!
He crouched low in front of the window, holding the whimpering girl in front of him.
“Shut up!” he told her savagely.
He saw a man running toward him from the front of the courtyard.
“Stop!” Cutter shouted. “Don’t come any closer!”
The man halted. It was the motel owner. Then another man plunged into the yard from the unit next door to Cutter’s. The kid’s old man, damn her!
“Keep back!” Cutter shouted warningly.
He smashed one of the small window panes in front of him and poked the muzzle of his gun through the rusty screen.
“I’ve got the girl in here!” he snarled. “One step closer and she gets hurt!”
Cutter wasn’t really prepared for what happened next, and he almost waited too long. The short man from next door gave an insane bellow of rage and rushed toward Cutter’s door. Cutter aimed low. He squeezed the trigger. The Special kicked in his hand, and the man went down as if he had been tripped while on the run. He landed on his face.
Cutter swung the muzzle of the gun toward the motel owner’s chest. The owner took a step toward the fallen man. At the same instant a door opened on the other side of the courtyard and a woman shouted something that Cutter couldn’t make out. He glanced toward the sound and saw the woman being pulled back inside her room. The door shut. Somebody was being smart, anyway.
Another door opened and a man ran across the yard toward him. Cutter tensed. Another goddamned hero!
“Keep away!” he shouted.
The man kept coming. Cutter fired at his feet. He went into a cr
ouch but still kept moving forward. Cutter’s finger started to tighten again on the trigger. He held that final squeeze long enough to see that the man was running toward the figure on the ground. Cutter let him come.
Everybody was coming to the party, he thought angrily. But where were the two men from L.A.?
The man who had come out was crouching beside the fallen man, and the motel owner moved over to them.
“Get him out of here!” Cutter called out. “And everybody back inside. The first one that comes again gets his head blown off.”
The two men lifted the fallen man and carried him to his own room. Cutter edged over to the side of the window so that he could keep them in view. They disappeared into the unit. Cutter waited alertly, his eyes flicking back and forth over the courtyard. The young girl was trembling and crying.
“Shut up!” Cutter snapped.
The two men came out again from next door.
“Get back where you belong,” Cutter called out clearly. “And if you call the cops, these girls get hurt.” He looked at the motel owner. “I’ve got the office girl here, too.”
The motel man turned and said something to the other man, who nodded, looked toward Cutter, and then started back toward his own room. The owner stared toward Cutter for several seconds, and Cutter watched him narrowly. Then the man turned and walked back toward the office. Cutter kept the .38 trained on his back all the way.
When the courtyard was empty, Cutter told the young girl, who was silent now but shaking with fear, to lie own and not to make a move. She did what she was told. He glanced toward the tall girl. She lay where she had fallen, but her eyes were open and she was staring at him. Cutter could see the raw wound in her cheek where the front sight of the Special had slashed through. Half of her face was dark with blood.
He moved back slightly from the window. An ominous silence had fallen over the motel. He couldn’t hear a sound, and there was no sign of movement anywhere. Where were those bastards from L.A.? Their very absence helped to prove to Cutter that he had been right. They were Garner’s men.
Suddenly the lights went out in the courtyard and the entire motel was enveloped in a pitch blackness. Cutter cursed. That stupid motel owner, damn him! He was going to try to pull something.
“Don’t move,” he commanded in a low voice. “Don’t either of you two move.”
He didn’t think either of the two girls was going to give him any more trouble, but the darkness made him nervous. He moved back from the window and began to edge around the bed. His eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness, and he could make out the shape of the building surrounding the empty courtyard.
At that moment, with a chilling spasm of fear, Cutter remembered the window in the back bedroom through which he had brought the girl from the office.
He hadn’t had time to close the window.
30
Cutter’s first shout stopped Art in his tracks. He was still hesitating, debating his move, when the man from Unit 7 plunged through his door into the courtyard, a wild angry look on his face.
“Keep back!” the voice warned from the next unit.
Art heard the tinkling of broken glass and saw the short barrel of a gun. The man inside, the man he knew as Albert Harrison, called through the window.
“I’ve got the girl in here! One step closer and she gets hurt!”
Marina! He had Marina! Art took a partial step and caught himself. An impotent fury boiled up inside him. He couldn’t take any chances with Marina in there. But Burt Herman gave a roar of anger and rushed toward the gunman’s door. The blast of the gun filled the courtyard and Herman went down.
Art started toward him at the same moment that the gray-haired man came running across the courtyard from Unit 4, ignoring the shouted warning from behind the broken window. For the next few moments Art moved in a kind of trance. His mind proposed and instantly rejected a dozen moves. All he could think of was Marina, trapped in that room with a killer, and he couldn’t understand what had happened. What was the reason for the first shot?
Art helped Richard Wallace get Herman back into his own unit. His wife, white-faced and badly frightened, began to cry when she saw him. The young boy was there, equally scared. Art guessed that Herman had only a flesh wound. He told the woman to keep Herman quiet and do what she could to stop the bleeding.
“Lois,” the woman babbled. “He’s got Lois!”
For a moment then Art thought that he had been wrong, that Marina was safe after all. He returned to the yard with Wallace. The gunman ordered them to get out of sight, and warned them not to call the cops. His last phrase brought a chilling numbness to Art’s chest.
“I’ve got the office girl here, too.”
Art told Wallace to get back to his own room and stay there. He walked back to the office, conscious of the gun trained on his back. He knew this was a professional killer, not a man who had gone out of his head, but a man who knew exactly what he was doing. Art thought of the shotgun in the closet of his bedroom. He didn’t know how he was going to get Albert Harrison, but he was going to get him. And if Marina had been hurt….
His mind torn between his fury and his fear for Marina, Art plunged into the office and started toward the back. The door slammed behind him. Art started to turn. A harsh command stopped him.
“Don’t move!”
Slowly Art turned his head. The big man from Unit 5 Stood near the door, a Luger in his hand, pointed at the middle of Art’s back. And his smaller partner was circling warily around in front of Art.
“Where’s the goddam light switch?” the small man snarled.
“What do you mean?”
“The lights, goddamnit! For Christ’s sake you can understand English, can’t you? Where’s the switch?”
“Wait a minute,” Art said, the cold finger of fear creeping up his neck. “You can’t turn out all the lights. The guy in number eight has two girls in there. If you try to pull anything, they’ll get hurt.”
“Tough,” the big man growled. “Where’s the main switch?”
“Look, what’s this all about? You can’t—”
“Shut up!” the big man said. “I’ll ask the questions. I thought this guy in number eight was with a family.”
“He registered that way,” Art said. “But he’s alone.”
The big man swore. “I knew I recognized that voice on the phone,” he said, half to himself. “I just didn’t place it. I should have known it was Cutter, damn it!” He glared at the small man. “And you should have checked that black Ford closer.”
“For Christ’s sake, don’t try to blame it on me!” the little man snarled.
A flickering of understanding came to Art. These were killers, and they were after Albert Harrison, the man they called Cutter. He was probably one of them, or a rival, equally dangerous. And if they went after him, Marina would be caught in the middle.
“Where’s the light switch?” the small man rasped.
“It’s out back,” Art said, “just outside the kitchen door.”
The little man lifted the section of the counter and started through it. Art, watching the big man’s face, saw his eyes flick toward the small man, and he made his move.
The big man was caught by surprise. Art dove low, hitting him at the knees, smashing him back against the door, in one continuous movement driving the big man back with his shoulder and lifting up with his arms, taking the man off his feet. They went down together.
As they hit the floor, Art rolled, twisted forward and caught the man’s gun hand, twisting with all his strength, forcing the wrist back. He had made one mistake. He hadn’t counted on the big man’s strength. His arm came back up slowly, against all the force of Art’s grip, and his free hand clubbed Art in the back of the neck. Art hung on, but the small man was moving in now, and there was something loose and black in his hand. Art saw his hand swinging in a short, vicious arc, and he tried to duck away. The blackjack caught him low on the neck, missing his head. Hi
s whole back and his left arm went numb.
Then the big man was free and his fist thudded against Art’s jaw, snapping his head back. The blackjack struck a glancing blow against his skull and he went down. They kicked him then, while he lay on the floor, unable to move, his head feeling as if it had been shattered into a thousand slivers of bone.
“The son of a bitch,” one of the men said. His voice was fuzzy and Art couldn’t tell which of the two men it was.
“Find that switch,” the other said dimly. “Did you get the phone wires?”
“Yeah. They’re cut.”
The voices stopped. Art felt an inky blackness washing over him. He fought it, trying to focus his mind on one single thought. He had to stay conscious if he was going to help Marina. He couldn’t let go. He couldn’t black out. He had to help Marina.
The blackness stopped moving in, just short of the edge of his mind It didn’t move back, but it stopped encroaching, and he concentrated on it, trying to force it back.
“That does it,” a voice said far above him. “Let him try to see us in the dark.”
“You got the spitball ready?”
The blackness in Art’s mind drew back a little, maybe an inch. You’ve got to save Marina, he told himself very carefully. Don’t let go. He kept concentrating, and the blackness receded a little more.
“How we gonna do it?”
“You just get close enough to throw.” It was the big man’s heavy voice. “I’ll move in from the back. Maybe I can get in a shot. I can make it hot enough so that he’ll stay in the front room.”
“I don’t have to be too close. I can hit that lousy window from the highway.”
“Don’t take any chances. Get as close as you can. And don’t throw until I signal. Two quick shots, a pause, then another shot. Got that?”
“Yeah, yeah, for Christ’s sake, I know what I’m doing.”
They’re going to throw a grenade, Art thought. Marina and the girl with her would be blown up along with the man they called Cutter. They didn’t care who got hurt as long as they got their man.
Night of Violence Page 12