I took the pistol out of my pocket and handed it to Gunther. It filled both of his hands.
“If you can read a book out here with the gun handy, I’d appreciate it. You can hear anyone coming up the stairs.”
“And what shall I do?” he asked seriously.
“With the exception of Mrs. Plaut, Mr. Hill, Mr. Stanton, and the Wycoff sisters, all of whom live here, and the possible exception of Joe Louis and the President of the United States, shoot any son of a bitch who comes up those stairs.”
“If it is necessary,” Gunther said seriously.
“Good,” I said. “We’ll talk all about it in the morning.”
I went into my room, hoping no one was hiding in one of the few available corners. I didn’t sense anyone. I propped a chair under the doornob, stripped off my clothes, and took off my shoes. It hurt to take off my right shoe. My sock stuck to the tape and I held back a grunt of pain as I pulled it off. Mrs. Plaut hadn’t told me whether I was supposed to put the bottle of red liquid on the cut or drink it. I opened the bottle and smelled it. Then I tasted it. It was cherry-flavored and alcoholic. I took a drink. It tasted like dinosaur piss, but it felt like it was doing its job. I untaped my foot and used the stuff in the tube on the stitches, and, by the little light from the window, I wrapped the gauze back around the cut and my foot, tying it clumsily before sinking back on my mattress. Outside the door I had heard Gunther pull a chair out of his room and drag it in front of my door.
I didn’t have a hell of a lot of faith in Gunther’s ability as a gunfighter. I didn’t even know if he could pull the trigger with both hands. My gun purposely didn’t have a loose trigger. It was, I always thought, better to struggle to get off a shot than to accidentally blow off my own kneecap.
Sleep came easily, sleep and dreams. The killer came running up the beach in front of Anne’s house, keeping pace with Joe Louis. They jogged along in slow motion toward me, and I stood there waiting. I wanted to run, but my legs were locked, heavy, unreal. The killer had a gun, but Joe Louis didn’t seem to notice or didn’t care.
I tried to shout to the Champ to ask him to help, to stop the killer, but nothing came out of my mouth. Then I figured out what to do. I had to wake up before the killer got close enough to shoot. It was simple. I told myself to wake up, but it didn’t work. I strained to wake up, pleaded with myself to wake up, shouted at myself to wake up, and then my eyes did come open. I sat up heavily as the door to my room scraped open and the chair I had put under the knob fell with a clatter.
Gunther stood over me, concern on his face. “Toby, you screamed,” he said, putting the pistol down.
Daylight was coming through the window and I knew I had slept and that Gunther had sat all night outside my door with the gun in his lap.
“I’m all right,” I said dryly. “A bad dream.”
On the floor next to the mattress was a strange stain in the rug. It was white and looked to me vaguely like a skull. At first I thought it was some warning given by the killer, who had crept in while I slept, but then I realized that I had made the stain the night before in the dark when I tried to bandage my foot. The magic ointment had burned a reminder to me of what I had to do next.
I told Gunther the situation and gave him the name of the killer in case something happened to me.
“I do not understand,” he said when I told him. “Why, Toby? In literature I encounter great reasonableness. People behave according to their established characteristics. If they have a deviation from what we feel is within the realm of their behavior, we say the literature is unreal, and yet we frequently encounter real people who contradict expected behavior: sober people who tell a funny joke, gentle people who do violence.”
“I guess that’s the difference between literature and life,” I said, zipping up an old blue baseball jacket and trying to find a way of comfortably hiding my pistol under it. “In literature we expect people to be real. Real people don’t have to worry about things like that.”
There were dark sags under Gunther’s small eyes as he nodded sadly.
“Get some sleep, Gunther,” I said. “Maybe everything will be wrapped up tonight and we can have that dinner.”
“Be—”
“—very careful,” I finished. “I will.”
I went out on the landing to the pay phone and placed my call. Anne thought my questions were a bit wacky and my excuses for asking them a bit lame, but she went along and gave me the answers. She also told me that I had missed Meara when I left her house by about five minutes.
Before she could press me for more information, I told her I had to run, and hung up. I didn’t have information yet, just an answer.
I made no attempt to be quiet going down the stairs with my gun tucked awkwardly into my pocket and the bottle in my hand. I knocked at Mrs. Plaut’s door. No answer. I knocked again. Still no answer but the chirping of Sweet Alice. I went back through the house, crossed the kitchen, and ducked out the back door to the garage, where I found Mrs. Plaut working on her car. She sensed rather than heard me, and looked up. There was a smudge of grease on her nose and cheek.
“Returning your medicine,” I said, holding out the bottle and tube. “It helped.”
“Are you going out to shoot someone?” she said, nodding at the bulge under my jacket.
“I hope not,” I said.
“You may call it rot in your youth,” she said angrily. “I call it good sense. The days a man could take the law into his hands are past. It’s not like it was when my grandfather defended the drugstore.”
“Not like it at all,” I agreed.
“Mr. Plaut’s automobile is almost ready,” she said proudly. She had been working on it for years, learning her skills from outdated manuals and library books.
“I plan to take frequent excursions to points not very distant that figure heavily in my family history,” she went on seriously.
“It will provide much needed detail,” I said, though the book she had been working on would drown all the great poets in description.
“Birds are a comfort, but they can also be a responsibility,” she added from nowhere.
“They are and can be,” I agreed.
“But not as much as dogs.”
“Not as much as dogs.” I nodded knowingly, not knowing whether we were talking about comfort or responsibility or what.
I knew the audience was ended when Mrs. Plaut rubbed her hands on her oversized overalls and plunged back under the hood of the car. I went around the garage, down the alleyway, and checked the street before crossing over to the church’s parking lot, where my car was standing alone and unticketed.
I got in, took a deep breath, and reached over to turn on the ignition. Before I could turn the key, I felt the cool metal of a pistol barrel against my neck.
9
“I‘m really not a bad guy,” Meara said behind me, easing up on the pressure against my neck now that I knew he was there.
“I never thought you were,” I said amiably.
“Sure,” he said with a puff of air from his red cheeks. “You say that now when I have a gun on you, but what would you say if I put it away?”
“Good-bye,” I tried.
I watched him shift to a more comfortable position and try to straighten his badly rumpled suit.
“You’re a funny guy, Peters,” he said. “I mean it. Damn, it’s uncomfortable back here. You ever think of cleaning this thing out? You got books, empty pop bottles, and who knows what kind of shit.”
“Sorry,” I said, watching his pink face in the rearview mirror. “You were saying you’re not a bad guy.”
“Right, right,” he agreed. “Thanks. I mean I considered placing the barrel of this weapon against your head a few times when you got in. I’ve been sitting here for four hours thinking about just what I would do. Couldn’t come up with anything. If I hadn’t dozed off I’d probably be in a really bad mood. But the sleep helped.”
“Good morning.”
“God,” he said, rubbing his nose and the stubble on his face. “I could use something to eat.”
“You want me to drive you to a restaurant or take you up to my room for breakfast? I’ve got some Shreddies and a few eggs and coffee.”
“No thanks,” he said. “My car is around the corner. I’ll get something when we’re done. You know, you’re wanted for questioning in the murder last night. You want to guess who died?”
“Lipparini,” I said.
“Lipparini,” he repeated. “Personally, I don’t care if you take out Lipparini, those two shits at the gym. That’s on your own time. I’m still working the Ralph Howard murder. And I want something from you.”
“The Negro on the beach,” I said.
“Parkman,” he groaned. “I thought you were smart. I don’t want the nigger anymore. Your captain brother covered that up with a neat little report. I figure Parkman for all of it, and that’s the fella I want.”
“What if he didn’t do it?”
He shrugged indifferently. “I’ll know that after I have a little talk with him. You give him to me, or we can finish our little talk back at the library. Better than that. I can turn you over to Lipparini’s friends.”
Someone came out of the church, a man who might have been the bishop or reverend or whatever he was called. He looked at me and Meara through the front window of the car. The man was tall and distinguished-looking. He looked as if he might come over and find out what the devil we were doing there, but Meara held up his gun so the man could see it and the good Samaritan changed his mind. Our souls could wait and he could, for the moment, forgive our trespasses.
“You wouldn’t turn me over to Lipparini’s friends,” I said. “You’re a lot of things, Meara, but I can’t see you dealing with the bandits.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking out the window and chewing on his thumb. “I told you I was a nice guy.”
“You said you weren’t a bad guy,” I reminded him. “That’s not the same thing. Let’s deal. I turn Parkman over to you by tomorrow morning at the latest, or I come in myself and you can finish showing me the book of the month.”
He thought about it. I could tell he was thinking by the way he looked back at my neck and tapped the barrel of the pistol against his teeth.
“I don’t know a hell of a lot about you, Peters, but I know you stand up on your word.”
“It’s all I’ve got to sell,” I agreed.
“Naw, you’ve got a big mouth and a hard head,” he said. “Tomorrow morning at the latest. I’ll be at my desk or Belleforte will. If both of us are in the can or at lunch, you keep calling. I don’t want your brother to have Parkman, not no way, not no time.”
“You want to shake on it?” I offered.
Meara put his gun into his shoulder holster, looked at his right palm, and decided to keep his hand on his side of the seat. “Eat shit,” he said, getting out of the car and slamming the door.
I rolled down my window and grinned at him. “You really hold your own, Meara. ‘Eat shit.’ I’ll have to remember that one.”
As I starred the car, Meara began to kick the rear fender. His kicking brought the reverend to the window of the church nearest us. I backed out fast, leaving Meara and the man of God to work it out. I knew about where I was going, and I had enough gas to get there. I reached over, put the .38 in the glove compartment, and drove.
The radio told me that the RAF had hit Nazi bases in northern France and that Ma Perkins was having a problem with her daughter; and the day looked pleasant. One of the things I missed on the radio since the war started was the weather reports. The newspapers didn’t tell you what was going to happen, the radio didn’t tell you. Walter Winchell said the reason was to keep vital information from the enemy. If the Japanese didn’t have their own weatherman, we had nothing to worry about.
I took Long Beach Boulevard to Ocean Boulevard and headed south down past Huntington Beach and Costa Mesa. It took a few minutes for me to get lost in the San Joaquin Hills, looking for Pedras Blancas. I overshot it and got directions back at a gas station on Laguna Canyon Road. It was a little after noon. I wasn’t hungry, but my back was stiff and I had mixed feelings about what I was going to do.
I bought a couple of Whiz candy bars and a bottle of Pepsi from the guy at the gas station and talked to him for a while about business and the drop in tourist trade since the war. He was about sixty, weathered like a yucca tree, and had three sons in the war. He pointed out the service flag with three stars in the window of his gas station.
When I finally got to Pedras Blancas, I found a small all-purpose store with a gas pump and a counter with six stools. I asked the old woman in the store for directions and got back in the car.
There were two ways up to where I was going. I could drive the narrow road to the top of the hill, or I could climb through the woods on the slope and approach the cabin from the rear. I decided to pull into a clump of trees and make my way up the slope. If I drove up the road, chances were good I’d have a few bullet holes in my windshield and maybe in my head.
It was the hottest part of the day, and the sun was having a good time, but my throbbing right foot wasn’t in the mood. The gun in my pocket, the steepness of the hill, and my sore foot put me in a bad mood. I shifted the gun to my belt and kept going, making as little noise as I could and using shrubs and tree trunks to keep from falling. If the person I was looking for wasn’t there, I’d have some time to catch my breath, get into the cabin, rest my foot, and wait—that is, if I had picked the right place. I could figure that out when I got to the cabin.
When I got to the top of the hill, I stood behind a tree catching my breath. I was in reasonably good shape. I didn’t smoke and seldom had more than a beer, preferably a Falstaff. I worked out at the YMCA on Hope Street two or three times a week, meaning I played handball with Doc Hodgdon and I punched a bag that didn’t punch back.
It was the right place. I could tell by the black sedan in front of the cabin when I finally got to the top of the hill. Not only was it the right place, but the person I’d come for was here or the car wouldn’t be. The big problem was the clearing around the cabin. The cabin sat in the middle of that grassy clearing. Three metal garbage cans sat next to the house, the only possible cover. A raccoon was pawing at one of the cans, trying to figure a way to get it open.
There were windows on all four sides of the cabin. It wasn’t much of a house, but it was enough, two sections, real sanded log with an enclosed and covered patio on one side, a comfortable little cabin. Maybe I wouldn’t be seen. No reason to assume I’d be seen. I crouched, working my way around, and moved toward the cabin from behind. My sore foot made itself known. It had complained to me all the way up the hill, but I had taken that slowly. Now I was hurrying and my foot didn’t like it. The raccoon heard me coming, got scared, pushed against the garbage can, and knocked it over. I kept coming as I heard the cabin door open. I almost made it.
The killer came around the side of the house in a red flannel shirt and dark trousers, spotted the raccoon running for the trees and me slouching toward the rear of the house. He shot just as I pushed against the side of the cabin, out of sight. He shot again, even though he couldn’t see me anymore, and hit the cabin.
“I’ve got a gun,” I said.
“I’ve got a gun,” he said.
“What now?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose I have to try to kill you.”
The raccoon was rustling the brush as he ambled away, and I tried to think of another way of settling the situation.
“You could put down the gun and come back with me,” I tried. “Hell, you might wind up getting shot here and not me.”
“I think that would be better than going back,” he said. I tried to think of another argument, but I had to agree with him. In his place, I’d see it the same way. The difference was that I’d never be in his place.
Instead of talking, I moved as quietly as I could
around the cabin, away from him. I rounded the building and moved to the front. I peeked around the corner. He wasn’t there. Beyond the sedan I could see the road leading up the hill. I tried to find a dry place on my clothes to wipe my sweating palm and get a better grip on my gun. My pants weren’t too bad.
With my gun in front of me, I stepped out in front of the cabin and shuffled across the front of the building to the side, where I could see him if he were still standing where he had been. He wasn’t there. My right foot was numb and my left was on its own. A shot hit the cabin above me, and a second broke the nearby window. I turned and fired in the direction I’d just come. He was standing there, and I thought for a second that I’d hit him, but he raised his gun and took two more shots. The first ran a dark fingerline in the gravel in front of me. The second raced into the woods.
I flattened myself against the wall, held my breath, and took aim while he shot again. His shot was so far off it pinged against the fender of the black sedan. My shot caught the outside of the shoe on his left foot. It made him jump back.
“We’re both god-awful at this,” I said. “But I think I’m a little better than you are. For chrissake, give it up.”
He dashed through the door into the cabin and I tried to follow him, but he threw the bolt on the door and took another shot through the maple. The shot missed me by an inch or two.
“Enough,” I shouted. “This is enough.” I aimed at where the bolt should have been and fired. “I’m tired. I’m sweating. My foot hurts. I’m getting too damn old for this, and I goddamn don’t want to kill you.”
The bolt gave and I threw my shoulder at the door. It swung open, and the killer stood there next to an overstuffed chair, his gun aimed at a door across the room and not at me. Mine was aimed at him. It didn’t seem like a stalemate to me.
“You know who’s in that closet?” he said feverishly. His hand was shaking.
“Parkman,” I guessed.
“Parkman,” he agreed.
“If you don’t put your gun down, I’ll shoot and keep shooting. The closet’s small and I don’t think there’s much chance even I would miss from here.”
Down for the Count: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Ten) Page 15