Kill Me Tomorrow

by Richard S. Prather

  “Not yet. I didn’t want them to hear me slowing down too near the hotel.”

  I opened my eyes. We were almost there. And very shortly Artie had pulled up in the curving drive before the softly lighted entrance near the pretty rockwork with water trickling down its face, near the plants and all the pretty things—all of which hinted that my appearance was not quite up to Mountain Shadows usual standard. Artie seemed to notice it at the same time.

  “What happened to you?” he asked me.

  “The same old thing,” I told him noncommittally. “Many thanks for taking two years off my life, Artie. I’ll see you later. You wouldn’t want any wet money, would you?”

  “I don’t care if it’s drowned.”

  This boy was going to go far. “I’ll see you later,” I said, then strolled through the swinging glass doors into the brightly lighted lobby. If anybody asked me dumb questions I would merely tell them I was doing my thing. That covers anything these days.

  I’d started tramping over the pretty orange carpet when I saw the girl Paul had been with at the bar last night. She was walking from my left, toward the cocktail lounge and dining room. She saw me and came to a full stop, then, like the nice girl she undoubtedly was, tried to pretend she’d seen nothing unusual, and walked right by me.

  “Hey,” I said. “Miss.”

  She stopped again, a yard past me, but didn’t turn around. She peeked over her shoulder. The one eye I could see was not filled with a happy light.

  “Do you know where Paul is?” I asked her.

  “Paul?”

  “You’re Dinelle—something like that—aren’t you?”

  “I’m … my name is Janelle.”

  “Oh, yeah. Don’t you recognize me?”

  She studied me. Her expression changed. She had recognized me. Janelle turned toward me, but even now that I could see both eyes, I could detect no happy lights in them.

  “You’re that fellow with the Dogwatch people, aren’t you?”

  “Watchdog. But, I—I quit them.”

  “What have they done to you?”

  “Nothing—ah, that was just a joke. Just for fun—lots of fun … Do you know where Paul is? Dr. Anson?”

  There it was. The happy light in her eyes at last. “He phoned me a few minutes ago from downtown,” she said.

  That’s why I hadn’t been able to reach him. He’d been downtown, phoning Janelle. What a life he led. At least he was a good doctor. Which was what I needed.

  “I’m to meet him in the lounge,” Janelle said. “He may be there by now.”

  “I’ll tell him hello for you,” I said, and walked speedily to the lounge and inside.

  The room, perhaps because of the convention lectures, was less crowded than usual at this hour, especially for a Saturday night. Only half a dozen couples were seated at tables, two singles at the bar. One man was at a table alone, but he wasn’t sitting. It was Paul, and he was standing. Standing, with his right arm extended high in the air over his head, hand clutching a highball glass. “What in the hell is this?” he was yelling. “What is this? What is this?”

  I walked up next to him. “You look like the Statue of Liberty,” I said. “A stoned Statue of Liberty. Now, drink it down like a nice boy. It’s good for what ails you.”

  He spun his head around. “You!” he said. “You miserable—you—you’re responsible for this. Don’t tell me you’re not.”

  “Of course not. I mean, of course I won’t tell you I’m not. It’s no more than you deserve.”

  “What the hell is this gunk?”

  “It destroys the sex drive—”

  “Ah!” He sat down heavily. “No—you wouldn’t. Not even you, you freak …” For the first time he got a good look at me. “What the devil?” he said, eyeing me all over. “Are you all right?”

  “You call yourself a doctor. Of course I’m all right. I’ve merely had the bejeezus beaten out of me, and suspect I have been stepped on by stampeding cattle, and I am thus in a very delicate condition—”

  “You’re pregnant?”

  “Probably that, too. I’ve come to you because you are a doctor, one of those kindly and dedicated men who heal the sick, and dying, and because I am sick and I have only five minutes to live—”

  He laughed. “Yeah, you’re all right.”

  “Doctor, I have work to do. I must be up and about. So will you get up off your butt and give me a shot of ether or something? You might at least try to save the baby—”

  On one side of us was Janelle, saying in a plaintive voice, “Paul? Paul?” And on the other was Vera, looking warily at us as though expecting us to come to blows, saying, “Is something wrong with your drink, Dr. Anson?”

  He smiled. Smiled, not smelled. Then he said, “Why, no, my dear. I am a doctor, and in the interests of science I have experimented upon myself with poison, lye, hydrochloric acid, deadly viruses, and fermented marula berries, thus I recognize this drink. But, really, I’m just not thirsty.”

  He handed her the glass and she took it away.

  Paul got to his feet. “Come on, I’ll patch you up.”

  Janelle said, “Paul? Paul?”

  Paul leaned over and put his lips next to her ear. I couldn’t make out the words, but it sounded as if he were humming. She smiled, and Paul and I walked out of the lounge. A minute later we were at the door of my suite. I poked my key at the lock, and the door fell down.

  It landed with a great crash on the floor. I reached in and turned on the lights, then Paul and I went inside.

  He looked at the door on the carpet, then at me.

  “This is one of the cheaper suites?”

  “I forgot about that,” I said. I remembered Bludgett swinging at me, and the other men who’d been in my room then, but the way they’d come in had slipped my mind. It was odd. Now I clearly remembered that crash as the door flew off its hinges. The boys must have propped it up again.

  “Tell you about it in a minute,” I said to Paul.

  Somehow, the crash of the door falling made that missing chunk of memory start bugging me more. I remembered everything up to the end of my session with Bludgett in the convention room, but the only thing that had been bothering me was the call I’d been expecting from Professor Irwin. For all I knew, I might already have talked to him. If not, I sure as hell wanted to know what he had to say.

  The first thing I did however—after looking around the room and noting its disarray—was walk to the bedroom closet and reach up onto the shelf just above the level of my head. My hand felt the rolled towel; it was still there. I took the bundle down and put it on a table.

  I took the two automatics out, checked them. Both clips were full. Fourteen slugs. Two each for seven guys, the way I felt about them. I stuck one of the guns under my belt, then walked to the phone saying to Paul, “I remember Bludgett’s slugging me, but I’d forgotten he strolled through the door.”

  While we’d been walking here from the lounge I had told Paul about getting knocked out and coming to in the mud and rain, but I’d not yet mentioned the rest of it. So I said, “Aside from hoping you can patch this cut over my eye and give me something to muffle the explosions in my head, you might also provide a Band-Aid for my brain.” I finished placing the call to Professor Elliott Irwin’s number. “A piece of it seems to be missing.”

  “Oh? Another joke? Not to imply there has yet been one.”

  “Not exactly. Something I—forgot to mention.”

  I hit the high spots for him. Bludgett, the slice of amnesia, and Bludgett again. Then blackness until the awareness of rain.

  At the other end of the line, Irwin’s phone was ringing.

  Paul looked at me, seriously for a moment, then removed the unaccustomed expression from his face and said, “Forgot to mention it? You really did get socked this time, didn’t you?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it. This guy has to go sideways into airport hangars.” The phone had rung a dozen times. I let it buzz a little lon
ger, then hung up.

  I walked to the couch, folded the bath towel in which I’d had the guns, placed it on the cushions and sank rather squishily upon it. As Paul slumped in an easy chair near me, I said, “I remember being with Bludgett in the convention room sometime after seven-thirty P.M.—maybe five minutes later, maybe ten, I don’t know—and I recall his clobbering me there. But except for the vivid if unfortunately brief picture of him and his friends here in my room and Bludgett uncorking another one upon me, I recall nothing until I came to in the swamps about nine P.M.”

  I looked at my watch. “Forty minutes ago. Naturally all’s blank from the second Bludgett clobbering until nine. That’s gone forever, lost in limbo. But I must have been ambulatory, from seven-thirtyish until whenever it was when the second Bludgett clobbering occurred. Certainly I got from the convention room to my suite. And I would very damned much like to know what else I may have done.” I paused. “I know you’re a genius—you’ve told me so a hundred times. So do something like a genius.”

  “This,” he said enthusiastically, “is extremely interesting. I can’t tell you how glad I am that it happened. To you, I mean.”

  “How do I get my memory—”

  “Often when a patient suffers a blow, shock, or other trauma, there is amnesia for the immediately preceding period. This we call retrograde amnesia. Loss of memory for the period following trauma is simply amnesia—though when the patient is one such as you, who forgets his amnesia, he is obviously in serious trouble. Now—”

  “How do I—”

  “—your case is fascinating. Consider: you were struck a blow. You experienced simple amnesia—”

  “I was unconscious.”

  “I’ll get to that. A short time later you were struck another blow. This was a beauty—”

  “It was an ugly—”

  “—since from it you developed not only simple amnesia but retrograde amnesia and then forgot both your amnesias. This requires brand-new medical terminology. Which I happen to have right here. Obviously you are going through the menopause.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Women go through the menopause. So men must go through the womenopause.”

  “That is a brilliant hot-flash of insight. Sheldon, you should be a doctor.”

  “One of us should.”

  “Fortunately, that is my hobby. I am a veterinarian, and therefore should be able to cure you. I shall give you amnesia for your amnesia, which means you will not know you had it.”

  I squinted at him. “I think you’re serious.”

  “You’d better believe it. You know I’ve done a lot of work with hypnosis, right?”

  “You don’t mean you’re going to try to hypnotize me?”

  “Why not? I’m reasonably confident hypnosis can bring back your mislaid memory speedily and completely—bring back a good deal more, by the way, than you yet realize, Shell. Retrograde amnesia, when from a blow or shock, often clears up by itself in a short time. I know—you want it cleared up fast.”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “Merely being reminded of something that occurred during the time you’ve forgotten might stir up those little cells and bring everything back. Just as when the door fell you remembered quite clearly how that happened. Even though you still don’t remember anything of the period immediately before then.”

  He lit a cigarette, took a puff, looked at me. “There could be another factor here, Shell. Possibly—just possibly—during that period something occurred that you don’t want to think about, something so painful you want to forget it. And you’ve forced it down out of sight, repressed it—not consciously, of course. If so, hypnosis is even more likely to be the indicated therapy.”

  “I don’t know what could be more painful than getting smacked by Bludgett,” I said. “Of course, I’m concerned about Tony Brizante. And Lucrezia. But Sergeant Striker’s staked out at the house, and I don’t think the lads would try anything there anyway.”

  “Do you mean Mr. Brizante and Lucrezia … might be in some kind of danger?”

  “Paul, these guys are not jolly little—” I stopped.

  Paul didn’t know what was going on, not really. I’d told him about my getting banged around by hoods, but—even last night in the bar—I’d said little about Tony, and as little as possible about Lucrezia.

  I went on, “Well, the way things stand—maybe I should say stood, before Bludgett—I don’t think she and Tony are in any real danger from the bums. Seems clear to me the hoods’ major and almost sole interest at the moment is knocking me off.”

  “Did you see Miss Brizante this afternoon?”

  “No, I saw her when I left the Villas this morn—what do you mean, this afternoon?”

  “She tried to phone you. Couldn’t reach you, remembered you’d mentioned me as a friend. Also I think she was with you at the desk when you left a note for me here yesterday.”

  “That’s right.” I was getting a very strange feeling. An uneasiness in my stomach; a delicate pulsing, as if a tiny artery were moving in my brain. “You haven’t seen her, have you?”

  “No. But when she couldn’t reach you by phone—even had you paged—she called me. Wanted me to try to find you, give you a message.”

  “When was this?”

  “A little before seven P.M.”

  I would have been making my preparations for Bludgett then. “Message?” I asked Paul. “What message? Come on, spill it.”

  “I’ll do this my way, Shell. Miss Brizante asked me to tell you that a man named … Yarrow?” Paul was speaking very slowly.

  “Henry Yarrow,” I said.

  “That he doesn’t live in the house where her father saw him go Tuesday morning … but she knows who does.” He paused. “Miss Brizante said there was more, but that was all she gave me. Mean anything to you, Shell?”

  I nodded. Of course. I remembered Tony telling me much the same thing. That they’d seen Yarrow, but two blocks from …

  It wasn’t a sudden shock, not a violent rush of energy through my nerves, I simply realized I was remembering. But my flesh grew cool and my mouth was suddenly dry. I remembered speaking to Tony Brizante on the phone. And—before that—Elliott Irwin. The professor.

  I heard Paul saying, softly, “Just let it come … easy … don’t push it … relax and let it happen …” but it didn’t really mean anything to me. I was leaning forward, trying to reach for those thoughts with my entire body, as it all came back to me. All of it.

  Paul spoke again. “OK, Shell?”

  I looked at him. “I remember.”

  I did. I even knew now the length of time blotted temporarily from memory. I’d been knocked off the stage by Bludgett at approximately seven-forty P.M. And I’d just finished talking to Tony Brizante about eight-twenty when Bludgett had conked me for the second time. Forty minutes.

  In less than three-quarters of an hour: the Voiceprints tagging Lecci, Weeton, the Reverend; at the Mountain Shadows desk; talking to Tony Brizante about the phone calls, the car, Lucrezia.… The return of memory had happened in a way I didn’t understand and didn’t care if I ever did understand. Because all I could think about was Lucrezia.

  Paul interrupted my thoughts, speaking gently. “That wasn’t quite all of it, Shell. Miss Brizante was telling me to have you phone her as soon as you could, but then she changed her mind—decided right then, apparently—and said it was important enough that she wanted to talk to you herself, so she was coming to Mountain Shadows. She told me she’d be here within half an hour, asked me to find you if I could and keep you at the hotel, and hung up.” He stopped for a moment. “I looked around for you until seven-thirty, assumed she must have arrived, and went downtown.”

  I said, my voice so tight Paul was obviously surprised, “She told you she knew who the man was, the one in—the other house. Did she mention his name on the phone?”

  “No … just said she knew who he was. Maybe she was going to tell me, but that’s when she decided to
come in and see you herself.” He chewed on his lower lip. “Well, you say you remember now. Did she talk to you?”

  “No. She didn’t make it here. She …”

  I was quiet for so long that Paul said, “Shell, what’s the matter? Are you all right?”

  “She’s dead,” I said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Don’t be an ass,” Paul growled. “I think you got slugged on the head so hard it scrambled what few brains you had. You sit there guessing—”

  “Maybe I am, but I know the whole story now, except for maybe one or two little pieces, and it’s a damn well-educated guess. I just didn’t know until a few minutes ago what reason those slobs would have to kill her—”

  “Shell, no bunch of crummy hoods is going to kill Lucrezia Brizante—everybody in the country knows who she is.”

  “Sure, I thought of that. You wouldn’t think the bastards would grab her, either. But they did.… Wait a minute.”

  I got up, walked across the room and back, over and back again. They’d put the snatch on her, hauled Lucrezia out of her car. I still had no doubt about that—and I knew now it had happened right after she’d phoned Paul. But … I recalled thinking earlier, those bums wouldn’t kill Lucrezia unless they felt they had to take the big chance, and in addition believed they could get away with it.

  And suddenly I felt, almost knew, she must be alive.

  The hoods had reason enough to kill her—if not, they wouldn’t have grabbed her in the first place. But they damned well knew they couldn’t get away with it as long as one man was alive: me. As long as I was alive, I was the boy who could tag them for the kill. And make it stick. Not that I was much different, to those creeps, from anybody else they’d be happy to hit. Except that I knew enough—at least, almost enough—right now to rip them up.

  I stopped in the middle of the room. If it was true that those crumbs wouldn’t kill Lucrezia as long as I was alive, the reverse was also true. And the other side of the coin wasn’t so bright: as soon as they could kill me, Lucrezia was dead. But I was damned if I was going to sit on my can while they had her.