Night of Violence

by Louis Charbonneau

  Pete rounded the corner and inched along the wall toward the rear window. He got right up to the edge of the window before he stopped. For a long minute he stood there, not moving, listening. There wasn’t a sound from within the room. Maybe Cutter was right inside there, waiting, watching the window. Maybe Pete should play it safe—get back in the brush twenty or thirty yards away and start shooting. That was the smart way to play it. And Pete knew that the smart way was the only way. He would have to be lucky to hit Cutter—but he would set him up for the grenade. And Pete himself would be taking a minimum risk.

  The trouble was that he kept thinking about Al, and every time he thought about the kid brother, and the way Cutter had slugged Al, catching him by surprise, Pete got madder. He didn’t want to shoot blindly, serving only as a cover for Lefty. He wanted to do the job himself.

  Pete got an idea. He could make Cutter reveal himself—and that way Pete might get in one good shot. If it didn’t work, he could fade back under cover and start shooting. He bent cautiously and picked up several small stones. Standing erect again, he covered the window with his gun, and with his left hand he tossed one of the stones against the glass.

  Nothing happened. Pete was disappointed. He had figured Cutter would be so nervous he’d shoot at the slightest sound. That was the only explanation which fitted the earlier gunfire.

  He threw another stone, a little harder this time. The rap of the stone was quite loud against the glass. Again there was no reaction. Maybe he wasn’t there at all, Pete thought angrily. The window was part way open. Would a man who was hiding from his killers leave the window open? While Pete and Lefty had been up front, getting the lights out and fooling around with the motel owner and that couple, Cutter could have slipped away. He hadn’t taken his car, but he could have taken off on foot, maybe figuring to steal another car.

  Pete felt the anger rising at the thought that Cutter might have got away. He felt a strong urge to step right out in front of the window and start blasting, just on the wild hope that Cutter would be there in the line of fire. He controlled the impulse, but it wasn’t easy. The anger and hatred came to full boil. He had to get in one good close shot, damn it!

  Very slowly, knowing that he wasn’t playing it safe, not the way Garner had taught him, Pete edged closer to the window, crouching low under the sill. He eased himself upward inch by inch, bringing his head up over the sill at the lower left hand corner of the window just enough so that he could peer inside with his right eye, presenting as small a target as possible. Nothing happened. The room was too dark to see anything. There was still no sound.

  For Al, he thought. This one’s for Al. He stood up straight, bringing the muzzle of the Luger over the sill, his finger tightening on the trigger.

  34

  Cutter made the tall dark-haired girl and the young kid lie down on the floor, face down, where he could see them. Then he took up his station the way he had planned it earlier, just inside the door of the small back bedroom, where he had the protection of the chest of drawers on one side, and where he was out of range of any shots fired through the front window. In addition, he had a clear view of the front door. He didn’t go back to close the window at the rear. To do so he would have had to expose himself, however briefly, at the window. And someone could be out there now, waiting for just that target.

  Patiently, Cutter settled down to wait. He knew from long experience that the man who could wait longest, the one who could sit back and let the other guy commit himself with the first move, had a big advantage. When the other guy made his move, he limited the next moves he could make, and he became that much more vulnerable.

  The girl, the one named Lois, started to whimper. For a minute Cutter listened to the sound. He began to get angry. If she hadn’t pulled this stupid stunt of climbing in through his window, because she had hot pants for a crummy singer, Cutter wouldn’t be trapped this way. Sam’s two hoods might never have known he was there.

  But even as he thought this, Cutter knew that he had trapped himself. He shouldn’t have left his rooms, for one thing. He might have been caught out in the open. And he never should have let the girl catch him in the office the way she did. He should have had that figured out beforehand. Finally, he should have known that Sam’s men would never have been hiding in the bathroom. They would’ve got Cutter the instant he climbed back through his window.

  I’m losing my touch, Cutter thought. He’d made more mistakes this one night than he’d made in twenty years. It was Carla, damn her! Since that first afternoon with her in Sam’s apartment, he hadn’t been the same man. He was more reckless, more impulsive. He wasn’t able to concentrate on just one thing at a time. He was thinking too much.

  The girl’s whimpering was getting on his nerves.

  “Shut up!” he hissed.

  She became quiet.

  Figure it out, Cutter told himself. How would they work it? There were two of them. They’d try to catch him in a crossfire, one at the front, one at the back, figuring he couldn’t cover both areas. Let them shoot. They couldn’t hit him where he was. And if he waited long enough, one of them would have to move in close. All Cutter had to do was get one of them, and then the odds would be even. Better than that. He was inside, under cover, so the odds would really be in his favor.

  There was only one thing wrong with waiting. The cops. Maybe at that café across the road nobody would have heard the shots Cutter had fired. As for the motel owner, Cutter figured he would have had sense enough not to call the cops, in order to keep the two women from getting hurt.

  Cutter felt uneasy. There were too many maybe’s. Too many if’s. That wasn’t the way to figure things. This whole situation had got out of his control. If he got out of this in one piece, he’d be one lucky son of a bitch. And he had never believed in luck.

  He heard a noise and stopped thinking, concentrating on only one thing: sound. A faint scraping noise. It stopped. Another sound, almost inaudible. Cloth scraping against the outside of the building? It was from the back. Cutter crouched in the darkness of the corner near the bedroom door, behind the chest. He watched the back window.

  Something smacked against the window, and Cutter’s muscles tensed. He forced himself to relax. Wait. The sound came again, a sharper crack, like a pebble thrown against the glass. Cutter smiled thinly. They’d have to do a little better than that to make him panic. He kept his gaze fixed on the window.

  A sliver of shadow appeared in the lower right hand corner of the window, below the opening. It didn’t belong there. It had no shape or meaning, but Cutter knew what it was. The edge of a man’s face. He imagined that he could almost see the white of an eye gleaming. Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes. Somebody had said that once. But it took guts to wait.

  The sliver widened slightly. Cutter took careful aim at it, knowing that the eye whose gleam he could imagine but could not see, that eye couldn’t see him in the deep shadow of this far corner of the room.

  Suddenly the shadow in the window moved, taking fuller shape, becoming a man’s head, and another shape appeared, a hand with a gun, the barrel coming up over the sill.

  Cutter fired. A dent appeared in the round shadow shape, right at the top, as if a cleaver had just driven a wedge into a round shoulder of meat. For an instant the round shadow with the dent in it was silhouetted above the window sill against the dark blue backdrop of the night. Then it vanished.

  Cutter was already moving forward toward the window, circling to the right. He heard the thump of the body hitting the ground. He came up to the window fast from the side, leaned out until he could see the fallen body. It twitched convulsively, making grunting uh!-uh! sounds. There was a cold grin of triumph on Cutter’s face. Who did he think he was dealing with, an amateur? He pointed the .38 Special at the heaving stomach of the figure on the ground, taking aim deliberately.

  Suddenly the night exploded violently. A blast like a bomb going off rocked the building, and Cutter saw a
quick blur of light brighten the desert for an instant, like a lightning flash. His finger automatically squeezed the trigger. The body on the ground jerked once more from the impact, and then it seemed to deflate, as if the hole torn in the stomach by the fat slug was letting out all the air of life.

  Even as his eye recorded the last convulsive body twitch, Cutter was turning, moving back toward the front room, his mind churning with questions about the explosion, one clear thought emerging: it had something to do with the attack from the front.

  From the front bedroom there came a splintering crash. Cutter dove for the floor.

  35

  The Hideaway Motel’s pseudo-Spanish design had never especially appealed to Art Durbin. But for once he thanked God for it—for the flat roof and the false front that provided cover. He used Marina’s MG, parked out front right next to the office, as a step upward to the roof. The raised ridge surrounding the roof was about a foot high in the back, where it was straight, and higher in places along the inner face where the facade was scalloped in a series of curves defining the separate units.

  Art crept over the roof toward the rear or the motel, carrying the Winchester. There was one trouble with the footing. It was a built-up composition roof, topped with a light coating of gravel which was loose and made brittle scraping sounds under his feet. Art had to call on every skill he had ever learned to move silently over the treacherous surface. It had been easier to move quietly through dense jungle undergrowth.

  His progress was further slowed by the fact that his head throbbed painfully, and periodically the roof would seem to dip and sway under him, and he would have to stop and lie still until the dizziness passed.

  But he kept moving forward steadily, and without really thinking about it, it was as if he were back on the Islands, stalking the grinning enemy in the jungle. It was strange how you could forget something completely for years, never think about it, never use the skills you had painstakingly learned and practiced, and then, when the right situation arose, it all came back to you exactly as it was before, all the tricks of worming your way silently forward, carrying an awkward weapon in one hand, held out from you, moving the rifle forward first (only now it was the shotgun), then raising your body and bringing the knee up under you, letting the knee hold your weight, using it as a pivot to bring your body forward.

  It took a long time to say how it was done, but when you had had a lot of practice the actual movement was faster than the telling of it. And it was like swimming or driving a car in that once you had done it, and learned to do it well, under pressure, you didn’t lose the knowledge or the technique, no matter how long you were away from it.

  In a surprisingly short time—which yet seemed like an endless night as, every foot of the way, he waited tensely for the explosion—Art had crept along the roof over the office and the two units behind it. He reached the edge of the room above the driveway.

  He lay flat in the corner and slowly, fractional inches at a time, he raised his head. As soon as he could peer over the ridge he saw a figure crouched next to the car Cutter had parked behind his unit. Art resisted the impulse to duck down. He remained absolutely still, watching. The figure moved, slipping past the car toward the rear of Cutter’s rooms.

  Art watched until the figure disappeared around the corner. It was the big man. That wasn’t the one Art wanted first. He could have picked him off easily while he watched, but that would have left the other man free to act, the little man. And he had the grenade.

  Art felt a savage hatred for these men, the murdering ones, who brought their violence with them like an evil poison filling the air. He hated them for forcing him back into the habit and method of killing, hated them for making him want to kill. Most of all he hated them for putting Marina in danger, for the hurt that might already have come to her. And he knew that he would never forgive himself for the blindness and the lust which had allowed Marina to be exposed to the violence these animal-men brought with them.

  He pushed the hate back into his mind, letting it simmer there where it couldn’t cloud his immediate thoughts. He surveyed the area below him. The small man was not in sight, but he had to be nearby. That was the plan, the way Art had understood it. The big man was to open fire from the rear, and the small one would throw the grenade through the front window. Art moved his head forward and looked down.

  The small man was right beneath him, crouched, around the corner from the driveway. Art smiled grimly. It was not really a smile at all, just a stretching of his lips, an expression of cold satisfaction.

  Very carefully, he began to ease himself from his prone position. His toes slipped, just an inch, and the loose gravel moved. It made only a tiny scraping sound, but Art cursed silently and froze in the half-crouch. He remained that way for two full minutes, counting the seconds off in his mind methodically, not moving a muscle. Each heavy beat of his heart hammered painfully in his head.

  He came up into a full crouch. He put his left hand on the raised ridge at the edge of the roof. In his right hand he carried the Winchester, held out from his body. He leaned forward, peered once more over the edge to making sure that the man below had not moved, and then he vaulted over the ridge and plunged down.

  He was in the air, falling, when the little man pulled the release on the grenade with his teeth and stepped out, and Art knew that he was going to miss him.

  Lefty Cox thought that it was really too easy. The distance from the corner at the edge of the driveway to Cutter’s front window was less than twenty feet. And it was a big window. He could hit that kind of a target just tossing underhanded.

  The angle was no good, however. It meant that the spitball would explode at the end of the room near the front door. It would still do a hell of a lot of damage in the whole room. But if Cutter was in the back room. he could come out of it without a scratch.

  That was the idea of Pete taking pot shots from the back. Cutter was smart. He’d figure the shooting from the rear as a feint, with the main attack to come from the front. So he’d cover the front, and keep out of the way of those shots coming in the back window. And the bastard wouldn’t be expecting a spitball in his lap.

  There was one problem with Lefty’s position, and it wouldn’t have been a problem if he had been a right-hander. He was going to have to step out into the open in order to make the throw with his left arm. If Cutter was at the window, watching at the moment Lefty stepped into view, Cutter would have time to get a shot at him, maybe even before he could get the spitball away.

  Lefty gave a start, tensing. Someone was moving, off to the right, approaching Cutter’s unit. Pete, for Christ’s sake! He wasn’t supposed to move in close like that.

  Lefty watched him, puzzled, unable to move or call out. Did Mr. Brains think he was going to be able to climb right in the goddam window? He saw Pete come up behind Cutter’s car, glancing over in Lefty’s direction, then move on, circling around behind the motel.

  What the hell was he up to? For a moment Lefty was confused by this unexpected switch in the plan, but then he became angry. Pete was going to screw up the whole works. He was just like his brother. No wonder Cutter had made a sap out of Al Baer. Lefty was still burning about the way Pete had jumped all over him in the office. For a moment there he had been tempted to turn on Pete and cut him down to size. He’d had the knife ready in his hand.

  Angrily, impatiently, Lefty listened and waited. There was no sound from the rear. He began to feel jittery. That was the trouble with these so-called smart guys, he thought fiercely. They wanted to do everything themselves, and they didn’t tell you nothing.

  Jesus, there could be cops swarming all over the place any minute now. Lefty couldn’t wait forever. He was going to have to throw the spitball, and to hell with Pete. If the big bastard didn’t follow the plan, let him take the consequences.

  Lefty peered carefully around the corner toward Cutter’s window. One good thing, he thought. He’d be able to jump back behind the building a
fter he threw, and he wouldn’t be running any risk of getting hit by flying glass. That was a thing you had to be careful of when you worked this close.

  What in hell was Pete doing? And what was Cutter doing inside there? There hadn’t been a sound from him or a sign of movement. Could the bastard have got out through the back window earlier—right after those first shots?

  Lefty weighed the grenade in his left hand. Not like throwing a baseball, he thought. It took a special technique, but it was one which he had down pat. He edged forward to the corner. He was going to have to throw it, and to hell with Pete.

  Anyway, as long as Pete stayed clear of the back window and the flying glass, he should be okay. And if Cutter was in the back room and survived the explosion, he’d walk right into Pete’s arms when he tried to get out. That’s what Pete wanted.

  Yeah. It would work out okay, in spite of Pete’s not following the plan. Okay. Let’s see some of that old control, boy.

  Lefty heard a faint scraping noise. He spun around, feeling the abrupt tug of panic. It sounded as if someone was right behind him. There was no one. Nothing. Lefty stood very still, peering along the wall toward the front of the motel, his heart pounding. He could have sworn he heard something. Like a footstep. Christ, he was getting edgy! He had waited too long. All because that big bastard was trying to be the whole goddam show. He’d tell Sam about that. Big guys, they were all like that. They tried to push you around.

  Lefty turned back toward the driveway. Okay, he thought. Say your prayers, you son of a bitch! He brought the grenade up to his teeth. At the same moment he pulled out the release and stepped away from the protection of the wall, cocking his arm, he heard a shot from the rear, where Pete was.

  Art landed a foot behind the small man. He saw the white of the man’s eyes as his head turned, saw the startled look of fear, saw his arm remain arrested, poised for the throw. The echo of a shot reverberated from the back of Cutter’s rooms. Art grabbed the grenade from Lefty’s hand and threw it away in a long, sweeping arc. Then he dove into the little man, tumbling him backwards against the building.