It didn’t shake her for a minute. “I’m coming, Steve. I can’t stand it here anymore.” She sounded desperate. “I can’t stand myself.”
“You could wind up dead.”
“I don’t care!”
She meant it. It was in her eyes, something you couldn’t argue with. I yanked the door open, stepped out into the hall, and she came with me.
“The back stairs.” She moved to the right. “Down here.”
I followed her down a short hallway to a metal-faced fire door at the end. She drew it open and pointed down a flight of narrow concrete steps.
“To the garage,” she said.
We moved fast, our footsteps echoing loud and hollow in the enclosed shaft. We covered two flights before we stopped and listened, but we were alone on the stairs.
We stopped again at the main landing and it was a temptation to open the door into the foyer and take a look out, but we resisted it and hurried down to the basement garage which was deserted except for the attendant who was standing at the entrance with his back to us. The blue Olds was directly across. I took Vicki’s hand and started for it when the attendant turned around.
“Miss Mercer!” he started toward us.
“Just taking a run downtown,” Vickie said quickly.
The guy moved in fast, between us and the car. “Mr. Kellerman left instructions you weren’t to go out,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
For a moment we just stood there. Vicki turned to me. By that time I had the .38 out of my pocket.
“Okay,” I stepped forward, “out of the way.”
His head snapped around and his eyes fastened on the rod. “Easy, buster,” he cautioned us.
“Get back,” I said. “We’re leaving.”
The guy paused, trying to decide whether to be a hero. I knew he was going to do it, and I think Vicki did too. He jumped me. And did a good job of it because he hit my bad arm and the pain was paralyzing. He grabbed for my wrist, took me down backwards, and the gun spun out of my hand and clattered to the floor as he came down on top of me, digging his fingers into my throat.
I tried to struggle free of him, but it was no good because pain numbed me. I heaved against him and gasped for air. Suddenly his grip relaxed and he rolled off me like a sack of wet meal. He lay still.
My eyes cleared and I looked up to see Vicki standing above me with the gun in her hand. The attendant lay with his face to one side, flat against the concrete, out cold. Vicki looked from him to me.
“Nice work, baby,” I said.
“Your arm’s hurt,” she said. “I didn’t know—” She helped me to my feet.
“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s been taken care of.”
She nodded toward the car. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll drive.”
We got into the car and I made certain the attendant was clear of the wheels as Vicki backed out and pulled around. Suddenly the engine sounded awfully loud.
A short, stocky character stood in the entrance, surprised at seeing the car, and I figured him to be the second plainclothes boy.
“Halt!” he yelled. “Stop, miss!”
Vicki put her hand on the horn as her foot came down hard on the gas. The noise was deafening in the cavern of the garage and the cop jumped away just in time because we shot out of the place and hit the street beyond where Vicki wheeled the sharpest turn I’d ever seen. The tires screamed and she pushed it all the harder.
I turned in the seat and looked back at the cop out on the sidewalk who was limbering a gun on us. But just then a police car pulled up at the entrance and he turned and ran back toward it as another figure ran out of the apartment house. They were organized for fast action now.
“Give it everything, honey,” I pleaded. “Do your damndest.”
Vicki took the next corner without slowing down, wheeled again at the next corner, and kept moving fast. We hit for the intersection ahead, but the light changed and we caught a red one. So she took a right turn on the run and a bus, pulling through on the light, almost took us broadside.
“Let’s live a little longer,” I panted.
Somewhere behind us a siren wailed like a banshee.
“Hang on,” she said. “We’re moving!”
We left the main street, wheeled through a residential section, and slowed for a moment to listen. The sirens were some distance away from us.
“I think we’ve lost them. At least for a little while,” Vicki said. “Where can we go?”
“Find a phone booth,” I said. “We’ve got to get that call to Talmadge.”
We cruised, taking it slow, until we finally spotted a booth on the sidewalk next to a neighborhood grocery. We docked at the curb, piled out, and crossed to the booth. Vicki slid inside and turned back to me. I fished a coin out of my pocket and handed it to her.
I didn’t have to look for Talmadge’s number; I remembered it. I told it to Vicki and she repeated it back to me.
“Insist on talking to Talmadge personally,” I said. “They may try to stall you. In that case say you’re Elizabeth Wakely and it’s urgent.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“When he gets on the line, talk low, as though you’re trying to keep someone from hearing you. Be breathless. Keep talking, like you haven’t much time to say what you want to tell him. Don’t let him ask you any questions.”
She nodded. “What do I say to him?”
“Just say you’re Liz and tell him to come out to the beach house right away. Tell him you can’t explain but you’ve got to see him as soon as he can get there. Tell him not to bring anyone with him.”
She nodded. “I suppose you know what you’re doing,” she murmured.
“I’d better,” I crossed my fingers.
Vicki turned away, dropped the coin in the slot, dialed and went through the performance without a miss. She made it short and urgent, then hung up.
“Was it all right?” she asked as she stepped out of the booth.
“The best, doll,” I said. “The best.”
She gave me a look. We returned to the car, climbed inside, and pulled away.
“Now, where?” Vicki asked me.
“West to the beach,” I directed her.
“The streets are hot now.” She swung right at the next corner. “They know this car.”
“You wanted to come along.”
“I’m not complaining.”
For a time we drove in silence although I watched her from the corner of my eye. She was one beautiful woman.
“When you say Kellerman,” I said finally, “you mean the Kellerman?”
She nodded. “That’s right.”
“Newspapers and pressure politics?”
“That’s how I stayed out of it when the police checked in. Kellerman can handle anything.” She gave me a quick glance. “Does it make any difference, Steve?”
“That’s a lot of power to walk out on.”
“Not so much,” she said. “It all depends.”
“I hope you don’t regret it.”
Again we drove in silence while Vicki kept off the main drags. Nevertheless, as we drove through the side streets we both kept an eye behind for prowlers.
“Does Liz Wakely know she’s about to have company?” Vicki asked suddenly.
“No,” I said. “This is strictly a drop-in affair.”
“I don’t understand what you’re up to,” she said.
“I don’t either,” I told her, “not entirely. But I expect to before the night’s out.”
My arm was beginning to throb again, worse than it ever had. All this action wasn’t good for it. I leaned my head back on the seat and closed my eyes. Vicki understood and we drove without conversation until we reached the approach to the Coast Highway.
“It’s going to be risky,” Vicki warned me. “They’ll be watching the routes out of town.”
“If they spot us we’ll just have to try to shake them off.” I shook my head.
“Okay.” She banked for
the turn onto the highway. “Here we go.”
Vicki headed north toward. Malibu and we both kept the watch behind. Every now and then I glanced at the ocean where the surf was coming in heavy, catching up the lights along the shoreline and casting them back in broken reflections.
I wondered what it would be like to be sitting down there on the sand with Vicki, holding hands, with nothing to worry about. It was a corny thought but at the moment it had a certain appeal. Or with Gwynn—cornier still.
Suddenly I stiffened and jerked around to look out the rear window. Out of the night behind us rose the thin cry of a siren as headlights flashed out from a side road.
“They’ve spotted us!” I yelled. “Step on it!”
Vicki pounded the accelerator to the floorboard and the car leaped ahead. To wheel around a couple of slow-moving trucks she took over the wrong side of the road and the car coming toward us swerved sharply to get out of the way, his horn blasting in shrill indignation.
We slipped the curves like greased lightning, but the boys in blue weren’t dragging anchor either and the distance between us stayed the same. I expected them to open fire at any moment.
“Keep on through Malibu,” I ordered Vicki. “There’s a canyon cut-off just beyond. Take it when you see the sign.”
She nodded. “I know it.”
We blurred past the quaint police station and the garage, and a moment later a sign loomed ahead out of the darkness and Vicki banked into the curve. I hoped I remembered the road correctly; if I did it dropped over the summit and down to the valley highway. The siren behind us wailed long as it took the curve and from somewhere back on the highway there was an answering scream.
“The mating season.” Vicki bent the car into another curve that made the tires squeal. Her gaze flashed to the mirror, then back again to the road ahead. “They’re coming up on us,” she said anxiously. “They’ve got us beat on the climb.”
I turned around. She was right; they were inching up on us, fast.
“Watch for a curve and a turn-off,” I said. “We’ve got to try to throw them off.”
I dug out the .38 and twisted in the seat. If I could get a tire it would give us the break we needed. I leaned out the side window and as we took another curve angled for a shot. The cops, though, were ahead of me. Just as I cleared the window a shot cracked out, fire spit behind the headlights, and a neat little hole appeared in the rear window. The slug deflected and went through the top of the car.
I braced myself and let go with an answer. I fired three fast ones and either the first or the second found its mark; suddenly the police car swerved and skidded off toward the embankment. As we pulled away from them, though, the car righted itself and came after us again. Now, at least, there was a gap between us and it was getting wider by the second. I looked around at Vicki. Our eyes met for a second.
“Reprieve,” she said.
The word was hardly out of her mouth before the night rattled with the fast, repeated explosions of a tommy gun that turned Vicki’s car into a nightmare of flying glass and ripping metal. I jerked down in the seat fast and threw out a hand to drag Vicki down with me. Although I touched her arm I was a second too late.
She jerked under my touch and cried out as she stiffened against the seat, her face contorted with fright and pain. Then Vicki slumped forward as the car lurched crazily. The air was alive with the scream of the tires as the world spun with violence and death.
Something hard and cold like a lead pipe took me across the forehead as I pitched forward and lights pinwheeled in my head as I arced in a trajectory before the car jerked to a jarring stop. There were a series of small sounds, then the night was still as I lay there, shaking my head. Then I heard her moan.
“Vicki!” I reached for her—but she wasn’t there.
I managed to climb out of the wreckage. My hand was cut and bleeding, one leg felt oddly numb, but I was alive. The car had carried us to the bottom of a deep gully below the highway. Now it rested on its side.
“Vicki!” I called again.
“Steve,” her voice was faint, and in terror. I moved toward it.
She was pinned under the car. Apparently she had been thrown out and it had rolled over on top of her. I crouched close to see her face in the moonlight that spotted us through the trees. There was a deep gash over her left temple and her eyes were closed with pain. Then as Vicki opened them to look up at me something like a knife twisted inside of me.
“I can’t move, Steve,” she breathed.
“It’s my fault. I—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she murmured.
My hand stroked her cheek. “You’ll be all right,” I prayed aloud. “They’ll be here in a moment. They’ll help us. They’ll have to.”
She shook her head. “It’s no use. Go on—before they come—”
“No,” I said. “No!”
Vicki’s body tensed with pain. When the spasm passed she looked up at me again. “Kiss me goodbye, Steve,” she whispered. I leaned down close to her. “And tell me,” she said. “Even if you lie—I want to hear it—”
“I love you, Vicki,” I said. “It’s no lie.”
It wasn’t either. In that moment, just then, I realized that I did love her, in a strange and special way. I leaned forward to press my lips to hers in a long kiss. She strained toward me one last time—then, it was over.
Above us on the road the police car ground to a stop and further disturbed the night by loud voices and the violent slamming of doors. I looked down at Vicki, her hand was in mine. Slowly I let go and stood up. I wanted to swallow, but couldn’t.
“So long, baby,” I whispered. “See you around.”
As the cops came sliding down the embankment I dropped down to the dry bed of the gully and moved off into the bushes. The first cop landed at the bottom of the embankment as I continued down the incline, feeling my way through the dry foliage. Suddenly I heard one of the cops cry out and I stopped to look back to hear an explosion and see a glaring burst of flame.
I kept on moving and tried not to think of that beautiful body twisted and broken under the burning wreckage. When I thought I had put enough space between us I climbed the embankment to the road. My stiffening legs made the climb all the harder.
Just as I stepped out on the highway a car rounded the curve and caught me in the direct glare of the headlights. Then it roared by and I limped along. Pain shooting up my side didn’t matter; it made a companion piece for my arm.
At the curve I turned and looked back. The fire in the gully sent up a bright, obscene glow through the trees. The lump grew tighter in my throat. Then I moved on, around the curve, and didn’t look back again.
Chapter Sixteen
By the time I got out of the hills and back to the beach house I could hardly drag my leg. A red Buick convertible stood in front of the steps. There wasn’t light at the door, but a reflected glow on the side of the garage was cast by the living room lights.
I limped to the back of the house, cut across to the terrace, and looked into the living room through an open window.
The red convertible belonged to Talmadge who stood awkwardly before the fireplace, looking more than ever like a bilious toad. Liz was at the bar mixing herself a drink. They looked as much like father and daughter as Mickey Rooney and Lady Ashley. Talmadge shifted his bulk uneasily.
“You’re up to something, Liz,” he said. “What is it?”
Liz gave him a slow glance from across the room. “Why should I be up to anything?” she said. “I don’t know who made that call any more than you do.”
“It sounded like you.”
Liz finished the drink, picked it up from the bar and came over to him. I could tell she was enjoying the situation.
“I ought to get out of here,” Talmadge said.
“Oh, don’t rush off, Sam,” Liz said. She crossed to the lounge and sat down. “Now that you’re here, we ought to be able to find something to talk about.”
“We could find a lot to talk about,” Talmadge said. “Only I’ve been here too long already.”
“You’re nervous, Sam.” She crossed her legs with lady-like deliberation. “If anyone’s up to anything, they won’t get away with it.” She gestured to a chair. “Sit down.”
He shook his head. “I feel better standing up.” He started to say something, then thought better of it. “It’s a nice place you have here,” he glanced around the room.
“I like it,” Liz smiled. There was a pause. She was watching his face carefully. “What I want to know, is how you’re doing these days? You haven’t said, and I’m always interested, you know.”
A sullen expression came into Talmadge’s face. “You know how I’m doing,” he said. “If I don’t pull the deal in Vegas I’m washed up for good.”
Liz took a sip of her drink. “I won’t say I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve never lied to you about anything, and I’m not going to now. It’s always good to know one’s efforts are bearing fruit. Particularly when one has waited as long as I have.”
Talmadge took a step toward her. “Can’t you lay off?” he asked. “You’ve put too much attention on me. The big boys are throwing all their weight to someone else. It won’t hurt you if I make a living, will it?”
She shrugged. “That wouldn’t be thorough, Sam,” she said. “And a lady is always thorough in everything she does. That’s one of the things the finishing schools teach you.”
“Now, wait a minute—”
“It’s remarkable, isn’t it, how much influence a girl can pick up around this town—if she has the right background.”
“You don’t have to kick me when I’m down, Liz. Not with everything breaking against me.”
“No,” Liz said cryptically, “I don’t have to.”
Again Talmadge started to say something, then decided against it. “I have to get out of here,” he said. “I thought maybe you wanted to talk sense, but if you just wanted to get me out here to rub my nose in it—”
I moved across the terrace toward the door and both of them recognized me. Talmadge looked as if he was going to drop his teeth as he turned in wonder from me to Liz. It was hard to tell from Liz’s expression whether she was surprised or not.
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