Chapter Six
“DON’T GET excited, friend,” the man with the gun said, “and nobody gets hurt.”
“That’s the way I like it,” I told him. First I checked his face to see if he were joking; he wasn’t. He was a stout man with bulging eyes and a crewcut. His face had obviously been exposed to too much sun, and the bright pink clashed with his sport shirt and slacks.
“Why don’t you put that thing away?”
“Just do what I say, Howell, and stop asking questions.”
“So we know each other.” I tried to ignore the black snout of that automatic. “I wish I could forget your face, but I can’t place your name.”
“Smart guy.”
I looked around, not feeling smart at all. There was nobody near; the front door was closed and Lorna was gone. I thought about the six muscle men working out in the gym. Hand to hand combat was right down their alley. I thought about Ceil Bowne doing push-ups beside the pool while Lorna gazed at him with adoring eyes. And down in this closely manicured front yard, a fugitive from the racket squad was holding a gun on me.
I glanced at the gun, at the strange protuberant eyes, wondering if I could yell and stay alive. A yell for help out here in these ultraswank parts would get immediate attention … but was immediate fast enough? This guy looked like he’d shoot me just for wanting to yell.
And I wanted to.
“Get in and drive,” he said.
“Where’re we going?”
He motioned with the gun. He didn’t have a reserve of patience, that much was clear. I didn’t know this hood, so I couldn’t know what his orders were, but it was clear enough he preferred the gun to any other means of persuasion.
He slid over and I got in under the wheel. I felt strange, as though I were driving out of my quiet, screwball world into something I had never even believed existed.
The hood wiped at the film of sweat on his upper lip and his motion unnerved me. I dropped the keys.
“No tricks, Howell. You pick ’em up slow, or I break your hand.”
I looked at the wild, frantic lights in those extended eyes. “What gives here anyhow?”
“Like I told you, friend, stop with the questions.”
I sat up slowly, thinking that if I lunged against him I might get him off balance. I couldn’t pull my gaze away from that gun. It was all a mistake of some kind, but I could be as dead by mistake as any other way. It seemed smarter to go along with the gag.
He directed me away from Hollywood, along a drive into the hills. We rimmed a desolate canyon and I looked down at the tops of stunted piñon and boulder outcroppings all laced together with thickened smog. It would be a long time before anybody found my body down there.
The hell with that. If I had to go, there was no sense going alone. I stepped hard on the gas pedal, shrieked around the twisting curves.
“Slow down.” His voice was soft, deadly soft. Only the bite of that automatic in my ribs accented his words.
He ground the gun in harder. I thought crazily of jerking the wheel, going off the road and taking my chances; in a crash they would be as good as the hood’s, but as it was he had all the best of it.
“Right up there,” he said before I had a chance to execute or reject my idea, which I knew wasn’t too brilliant anyhow.
I stepped hard on the brake. A gate appeared suddenly before us. It. was swung open and a sharp-suited lad stepped out directly “in front of us. He was much younger than Crewcut and looked much less friendly.
He came around the car beside Crewcut.
“You get him?”
“Boss sent me for him, didn’t he?”
“Big man.”
“I do my work.”
“How can you boys sleep together if you fight all day?” I said.
The flashy hood straightened, his face flushed with anger. “You like a broken jaw, friend?”
“Take it easy,” Crewcut said. “You know what the boss said.”
“I don’t like nobody calling me no Frenchy,” the flashy boy said. He glared at me, mouth working. Funny, the men with the least virility are the quickest to take offense.
“All right, Howell, drive in,” Crewcut said.
In the rear-view mirror I saw Flashy standing in the middle of the drive, staring after me.
Two Cadillacs dripped dew in the drive before the Monterey-type mansion. We parked behind them and the boy with the gun urged me up the wide steps.
The front door was opened for us as we crossed the narrow veranda.
The man holding the door open was as big as Crewcut and me all mixed together — and that’s a horrible idea. He must have weighed two-fifty, and it was all muscle. His shoulders bulged, his chest protruded, and his legs looked like pillars of cement.
He was staring at me as if I were something he had never seen before, either. I liked his looks not at all. His pale eyes didn’t suggest a lot of gray matter; he was all strength and no controls.
“Is the boss in, Frank?” Crewcut said.
Frank’s voice was a strident tenor. It sounded reedy coming from half a foot above the top of my head. “He says to wait.”
“I can’t wait,” I said. “I’ve got an appointment.”
“Funny boy,” Crewcut jeered.
“You’ll wait,” Frank said.
“Where’s your gun, Frank?” I asked.
“I don’t need no gun, runt.” He jerked his head toward the rear of the corridor. Crewcut jabbed me with the gun because he liked hurting people, and we moved along the deep carpeting. Frank opened a thick, paneled door.
“All right. You wait inside.”
I heard the key turning in the lock behind me.
I stood in the middle of the room and looked around.
The room was richly, if tastelessly furnished. A door to the right apparently led to a deeper part of the house. Just for the hell of it, I walked over and tested it. It was locked, too. The thick glass windows were steel framed, set in concrete and tightly sealed. Air ducts across the ceiling were the only other openings. So much for the ways out of there.
I dragged my finger along the keys of the grand piano; it had been dusted recently, but the tuner hadn’t been near it for a long time. The drapes and the paintings didn’t interest me. There was a bar with everything a drinking man could want, but for the moment I was too angry to think about thirst.
I walked across the room, beat on the hall door.
After a moment it was opened and Frank stood there smiling at me with his dull eyes.
“Whaddya you want?”
“I want out of here.”
“The boss will see you in a little while. You got no cause to act up. There’s a bar; have a drink. You want anything, you pull that cord.”
“I don’t like being pushed around.”
“You be a good boy, and nobody pushes you.”
He closed the door in my face.
I prowled the room again. Anger was building up in me. I stopped in front of the bar, still not wanting a drink. ‘I wanted out. Besides, this thing was a challenge. I refused to believe that I could be jailed up in this house by three apes like I’d just met.
I went back to the windows, checked them. The frames were steel all right. I moved my hand along the middle support until I found the heads of the metal screws.
From the bar I got an ice pick and a bottle opener. It was painfully slow work, but in my anger all I could think of was getting out.
I didn’t hear the inner door open behind me, but I did hear somebody catch his breath.
I spun around, holding the ice pick and the can opener. It was a girl.
“You’re cute,” she said. “Who are you, honey?”
“Just a guy trying to get through this window.”
“What you want to do that for?”
I looked at her, thinking she couldn’t be as dumb as she sounded. On second glance I realized I was wrong; as lush as she was, she could be a complete idiot and nobody would ever
notice.
“Who sent you in here?” I said.
She came toward me unsteadily. I saw then she was barefooted, her feet clean and bright toed. At first I didn’t believe it: all she had on was this black net dress, and it looked as though she wore that only because she thought it looked nice on her.
It did. She was all creamy breasts and thighs and swollen lips.
She said, “Nobody sent me. Nobody sends me anywhere, you hear? Nobody. Not ever.” She waved her arm.
“All right.”
She smiled, a wan lighting of her swollen mouth. “They used to. Would you believe that? I used to have this hotel room where I had to stay all the time. They said when the phone rang, I’d have to be there so they could tell me where to go — and I’d have to go. Some nights, real late, even in the rain and the snow. It didn’t matter to them … men get some crazy ideas at the craziest times.”
I turned back to the window. “Like you, trying to tear down that window and go away and leave me. You don’t want to leave me, do you?”
“Devoutly.”
“Come over here and sit down with me.”
“No.”
“I’ll scream.”
I looked at her. Those blue eyes crinkled and she wriggled her toes at me. “Come on, honey.”
I sighed and walked over to the divan. She flicked the dial on the console I hadn’t even noticed, and music poured in upon us. She stood before me for a few bars, wriggling, snapping her fingers. She smiled, “Watch me, honey.”
I lay my head back on the couch. She toppled down beside me.
“Is somebody mad at you? Is that why they brought you out here?”
“I don’t know.”
She rolled her head along my shoulder, looked up at me. “Isn’t that funny? I didn’t know why they brought me out here, either. I was back in New York. I was staying in this apartment with Hazel. You know Hazel?”
“No.”
“Oh … well, we got along fine. She was like a mother to me. You know, a real mother. Of course she was younger than me and all, but she seemed to know so much more about everything. And when they told me I had to come out here, I cried because I didn’t want to leave Hazel. She was about the only family I had. She told me I ought to be glad that I was coming out here to Hollywood … but it didn’t seem so wonderful to me. A ceiling just looks like a ceiling, New York or Hollywood.”
She had pressed up close to me.
“Hazel said this was where movies were made and maybe if I was nice they’d give me a chance in the movies. I’d like that. You know. Going into a movie and seeing myself on the screen and all. I’m pretty. Even Hazel says I’m real pretty. My legs are pretty.”
She pulled her net dress up above her hips, stretching her long golden leg out in front of us. “Pretty, hmmm?” she said.
“Looks like it ought to support you.”
She laughed, her blond curls bobbing, and she nuzzled my neck. “I like you. You’re real cute. I like people that make me laugh. Nobody around here makes me laugh. Nobody ever laughs.”
She extended the leg, staring at it critically. It shone, catching all the light in the room. She slid it slowly across my legs, pressing herself closer until she was sitting across my lap with her face pressed against my throat.
I felt the burn of her, and a charge went through me as though somebody had switched on high voltage.
“Marie!”
She fell away from me, missed the edge of the couch and sprawled on the rug like an ambitious starlet posing for her first cheesecake.
Big Frank pounced across the room and grabbed her by the hair.
“You crazy little fool. What’s the big idea? We told you to lay off. You gone nuts? You got a good thing with the boss. You want to ruin it?”
He was twisting his hand in her hair and she came up on her knees, straining toward him. He started dragging her toward the side door through which she had come.
I let him get around the couch. I moved behind him.
The girl was trying to get on her feet. I said, “Frank.”
He turned, his face twisted.
I hit him in the kidneys with everything I had. He was all muscle, I can swear to that. I sent my left with all there was, and it bounced. The pain shot up my arm.
Frank gasped. At least he knew he’d been hit.
He released Marie and she toppled to the rug and lay there, watching us.
“Kill him,” Marie said. She didn’t say who she was cheering. Maybe it didn’t matter.
I had no time to look at her. Frank’s kidneys floated back into place and he started toward me.
I saw his fist coming, but there was too much of it to avoid. It caught me in the chest and I went feeling back against the piano keyboard.
He didn’t give me time to get set; his fighting methods had been learned in the gutter. He swarmed in on me while I was still moving backwards.
He brought up his knee and I shifted enough to save myself. His knee struck the piano and he cursed. I hacked at his face, moving away. I didn’t want my back to that piano.
He wheeled around and I hit him in the face again. He sat down hard on the keyboard. For a couple of seconds there was no movement in the room and no sound except Marie’s mewling and the echoing discord of the piano. You can believe me, it’s only in the movies that men are struck with bare fist against the side of the jaw and come driving back for more without even a moment to shake off the shock that occurs in the brain.
As he came away from the piano, I hit him in the belly, knowing if he hit me more than twice I was going to be mewling like Marie was on the rug.
The impact of my fist against his stomach muscles jarred me all the way to the shoulder.
It was wasted. He grunted and waded in.
For the next few seconds I caromed from chair to divan to piano to wall. I began to think my only hope was letting him hit me until he tired himself’ out, or got nauseated at the sight of my blood.
He threw his fist at me and I had just sense enough to roll with it. I struck the divan and flopped all the way over it.
I had maybe three seconds to catch my breath, shake the popping firecrackers out of my brain and move away from him before he came around that divan.
He was cursing. “Stop running, punk. Let me finish this.”
I grabbed a chair, upset it in his path and he plunged forward like a felled redwood.
I took a deep breath, counted four and brought the side of my hand down across the back of Frank’s neck so hard I heard his. Adam’s apple pop.
He went right on forward with arms outthrust as though he were diving into the shallow end of a pool.
I turned around, shaking the rockets and Roman candles from behind my eyes in time to see Flashy and Crewcut running through the hall toward me.
Flashy was in the lead. He had his gun upraised to crack me on the head, but when he saw me turn in time to offer even token defense, he slowed. Hand-to-hand combat was for the curio-boys in Ceil Bowne’s gym; they had to prove their masculinity to the world and to themselves.
With Flashy it was different. He knew what he was … and knew he worked better with a shiv or a gun. He hesitated, deciding to use the gun, barrel first.
That was Flashy’s mistake. He was still moving forward when I caught him by his pants and his shirt and sent him right on over my head. I heard him crash into something, but didn’t turn to see what it was.
Crewcut struck against me with his whole body, bulling me off balance. Through the sound of his breathing, I heard Marie squealing from where she had fallen. That girl was getting kicks from this violence.
I couldn’t get set to hit back at Crewcut. He was moving me backward and I had to fight to stay on my feet.
I heard this movement behind me, but there was nothing I could do. There was the sound of metal against skull, a sickening sound, and then a black shroud sank slowly from the ceiling and enveloped me; by the time I struck the floor I was all warm and snug inside
it.
• • •
Nothing in particular wakened me. I came out of it slowly and with much pain. The smell of blood was strong in my nostrils and I looked around dazedly. I was alone in the room, and the blood was my own.
For no good reason, I looked at my wrist watch.
Unless shock had stopped it, it was five o’clock. Faint light spilled through the west windows and made a faded puddle on the rugs. There was no noise except the ringing in my head. My clothes were soaked with my own sweat.
I sat up, assumed it was five o’clock in the afternoon, and could not think why time should be important. Vaguely, I remembered Jack Roland, and supposed time was important to the graying lover boy.
As soon as I could stand up, I staggered from the hall door to the other exit. Both were securely locked. I looked at the window I had been trying to jimmy, but I didn’t have that kind of energy any more.
I made it to the bar and leaned against it. I poured half a glass of Scotch and stood a long time with it in my hand. It would either make me feel better, or it would send the blood throbbing into my brain, and my aching skull couldn’t stand that. It was a chance I was afraid to take. What I wanted was a pot of black coffee.
I listed slightly going to the cord on the wall. I gave it a yank and stood there waiting for the genie to appear.
The hall door behind me opened after a few seconds. A bleak-visaged servant stood there, regarding me distastefully.
He said, “You rang, sir?”
I asked him what day it was and when he told me, I counted back from September and realized it was the same day that had started so hellishly with Jack Roland’s call from San Rafael’s stockade.
“How much longer am I going to be here?”
“I wouldn’t know, sir.”
I told him I wanted a pot of coffee while I waited.
“Certainly, sir.” He closed the door. I heard it lock.
I didn’t know whether I’d ever see this boy again, or if I’d get any coffee. I sat down on the piano bench and pressed my hands against my head, trying to push it back in place.
One Deadly Dawn Page 6