by Ed McBain
He planted a big fist under my left eye and I stumbled back into the booth again. Goddammit, I couldn’t get out of that goddamn booth! He lunged in after me, and that’s where he made mistake number one. I kicked him hard, with both feet, right where he lived, and he staggered back over half the room.
I was out of the booth almost before he hit the floor. I yanked him to his feet and pulled back my fist. I smashed it against his whiskers, right on the button, solid. It felt good, the tingle shooting clear up to my shoulder.
He bounced off the bar, sagged back against it for a second.
And then he made mistake number two.
He pulled a knife.
It snapped open with a deadly click, and he held it in his fist like an overgrown kid with a pointed stick.
I’ve never liked knives. Once, in Germany, a Kraut pulled a bayonet on me, and I nearly tore the bastard apart before the MP’s stopped me. I still carried a scar from his first lunge, right above my shoulder, too close to my neck for comfort.
Besides, it was an ice pick I’d seen in Johnny’s back, and that was as near to a knife as you can get.
Maybe the horse manure character expected me to turn white when he pulled out his pig-sticker. I don’t really know what the hell he expected, but I sure know what he got.
He got a bar stool over his goddamned skull. It didn’t break the way it does in the movies. But it made a nice, solid sound, like a hammer smashing against a coconut. He opened his fingers and the knife clattered onto the floor. He slid down to the floor beside the knife, a blotch of blood showing on the top of his head.
Al, the bartender, was already at the door when I stopped him with my voice.
“I wouldn’t go for the police, Al pal.”
He turned and stood staring at me, mingled fear and distrust in his eyes.
“You might find it hard explaining away that knife.”
The bartender’s face curled into an ugly thing. “Get the hell out of here.”
“That’s what Pete told me to do,” I said, grinning. “Didn’t you, Pete?”
Pete looked up at me and shook his head. “You’re crazy, mister. Crazy.”
“Sure. Sure.” I looked at my face in the mirror over the bar. My eye was beginning to look like a piece of meat that had been rotting outdoors for a week. All it lacked was the maggots.
On the floor, the pile of horse manure was beginning to stir.
I took a glass of water from the bar and saturated it. It was probably the first bath he’d had since Columbus Day.
Then I left.
Lois gave a little shriek when she saw my eye. I’d waited at Paradise, Incorporated, until the movie let out. I figured that was safer than walking around town.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
“I ran into a bus,” I said, trying to grin.
“Christ!” She reached up and touched the eye. I winced. “Poor pretty baby,” she said.
“How was the movie?”
“I missed you, Steve.”
“Sure, but how was the movie?”
“A hot one.” She squeezed my hand. “Oooo, plenty hot. I missed you.”
I began to feel that warm growth in the pit of my stomach again.
“I’d have been better off in the movie,” I told her.
“What really happened?” she asked, her face serious again.
“One of the local yokels. Decided my face was all wrong, and rearranged it a little.” I smiled, but it hurt my eye so I stopped.
“Where is he?” she said, putting her fists out in imitation of a boxer. “I’ll murder the bum.”
Murder. Johnny on a cooktent floor. An ice pick tipped with blood.
And a lot of innocent people lying their fool heads off.
Or a drunken copywriter with delirium tremens, seeing dead bodies instead of mice peeking out of the walls.
“I said something wrong?” Lois asked, her eyes wide.
I guess my face had shown what I was thinking. “No, honey,” I assured her. “Nothing at all.”
We were walking down the path leading to the speedboat sheds. She still held my hand, still reminded me of a little kid whose father had picked her up after the Saturday matinee.
Mark didn’t say a word when he saw my shiner. Maybe he’d seen too many shiners in his day. Or maybe he was just being delicate.
“Get your drink?” he asked.
“I got it, all right.”
“Ready to go back?”
“Anytime,” Lois said. The wind lifted her hair, sent it streaming over her shoulders like liquid ebony.
We hopped into the boat and Mark pushed it out on the lake, throttle wide.
Lois sat in the stern, her head thrown back, her eyes closed.
For a fleeting instant, I wished I were back in New York sweating over a hot twpewriter again.
Then we passed Big Burnt and I thought of Johnny, and I knew what my next move would have to be.
Mark dropped us off on Lois’ site. We stood on the dock and watched the speedboat kick up spray as it headed back toward the mainland.
I kissed her, gently, softly, her lips tender on my mouth.
“I doubt if I can see you tonight,” she said.
My heart gave a sudden leap. I was glad I didn’t have to make excuses, and I tried to keep my happiness off my face.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Promised Jean and Sam I’d spend the night with them.”
I made a face. “Sounds like fun.”
“Barrels full.” She grinned and moved closer to me. “Kiss me good night, Steve. Give me a real nice good night kiss.”
I gave her a real nice one, then watched her walk up to the tents in the woods. She smiled, blew a kiss, and was gone.
I lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of my dock, waiting for darkness.
CHAPTER FIVE
Night fell like a heavy stone, solemn and black. Twilight seemed to end suddenly, seemed to be shoved rudely out of the sky.
Blackness descended on Lake George. Above, shimmering sparks appeared in the sky, dazzling in their intensity. A thin lemon-yellow crescent clung to the water line, slowly rose in the sky to perch there like a grinning, lopsided mouth.
Yellow fingers reached out over the water, rippled it, sent it scattering in pale, nervous whips of movement.
The night noises began: the chirrups-chirrup of the crickets, the hum of myriad insects probing in the darkness, the whine of a speedboat out on the dark mirror of the lake, voices humming in the distance.
A joker on a nearby island screamed, “Oh, Gertie, how you groove me!” in a loud falsetto.
I climbed into the outboard and fumbled for the cord in the darkness. I found it and tugged and the motor miraculously turned over the first time. I pulled away from the dock and headed away from the island. When I was clear, I snapped on my flash and played it on the water ahead. I didn’t feel much like being rammed by one of the speedboats that skittered over the lake.
I pointed the nose around the jut of land, and began crossing the long stretch of water between Little Harbor and Big Burnt. I was heading for Johnny’s site.
There are some things you have to do. I didn’t intend solving any murder, you understand. I know my own limitations and I’m not cut out for cops and robbers.
But when you think you see a body with an ice pick in its back, it’s not so easy to pretend you didn’t see that body at all.
I was willing to bet my last penny that I’d seen Johnny sprawled out on that cooktent floor. My eyes are damned good, twenty/twenty the last time they were examined. If I’d seen anything in that cooktent, it was a body and not a sack of potatoes, or a rolled-up rug.
If I’d seen anything.
I had been drinking. But I’d drunk a lot more than that in my day and I’d never seen anything that wasn’t there.
Jean told me she’d washed the cooktent floor, and sure enough, it turned out to be washed when the ranger yanked open the door. That was
strike one against me.
Strike two was the fact that Mark took Johnny in to the mainland that afternoon. Or so Mark said.
I didn’t like all these strikes piling up. And so I headed for Johnny’s site, just to reassure myself. Just to make sure advertising copy wasn’t going to my head.
I pulled in alongside the dock and held the rope in my hand as I climbed up onto the rickety planking. I looped the line over one of the dock poles, reached down to snap off the motor, and then played my flash along the dock.
The pines cast long shadows over the uneven ground. There were no lights, no sounds.
I stepped off the narrow dock and flashed the light on the ground as I picked my way through the rocks.
The cooktent was ahead, and I started for that first. The door was slightly ajar, and it squeaked when I opened it fully. A daddy longlegs dropped from the ceiling, landed on my hand, started to careen up my arm. I brushed it off with a shudder and worked my flash around the tent.
Everything was in order. Pots all hung where they should be. Stove clean. Floor spotless. Kerosene cans in a neat row under the table. I walked over to the icebox and opened the ice compartment. A very small piece of ice was melting itself into oblivion. I closed the top door and opened the door to the food compartment. There was a half-full container of milk and two apples in the icebox. That was all. Foolishly, I wondered why the milk hadn’t been placed in the ice compartment. Then I realized that a guy who was leaving wouldn’t care much whether his milk stayed cold or not. I closed the door, rubbed a hand under my chin and started for the sole cabin on the site.
The cabin was in excellent condition, too. I yanked open the dresser drawers. Empty. Every one was empty. The mattress on the bed had been bent back over itself to air properly. I played the flash under the bed. Nothing. Even the floor had been swept clean. I went through the drawer in the end table near the bed. I found a package with three cigarettes in it, and a book of matches. I slammed the drawer closed.
Once more, I played the light around the cabin.
It had the look of a place that was left intentionally clean. Whoever left it this way had certainly intended to leave, had planned on leaving, and had made sure the place was spotless before he left. I sighed deeply and pulled down the folded half of the mattress.
A cloud of dust smothered the beam of the flash, rising like a flock of locusts. I backed away and covered my mouth with my hand. The mattress lay flat now. I played the beam over it when the dust had settled, found nothing, and folded it back again. I sighed, shrugged a little, and walked back to the dresser. Methodically, I went through the empty drawers again. Nothing.
I slammed the bottom drawer angrily, got down on my hands and knees, and flashed the light under the dresser.
Far back in the corner, close to the wall, was a balled piece of cloth. I reached through the pile of dust under the dresser and yanked out the cloth. The dust spiraled upward as I slapped it against my leg. When the dust cleared, I held it up to the flash.
It was a bra.
I turned it over gently, placing my hand behind one of the cups. It was soft, and I could see my hand through the sheer nylon. Flowing back from the cups, like a pair of shining snakes, were two black silk straps.
I looked at the bra and thought of something Lois had said this morning when Johnny’s canoe was pulling into the site. She’d explained who Johnny was and then added, “I like people, Steve. Lots of them.”
I nodded unconsciously, stuffed the bra into my back pocket, snapped out the light, and took two steps toward the door.
There were twin reports as the shots rang out. Two in a row. Fast.
They sliced through the screen and whined close to my head. I dropped to the floor, hugging it and waiting.
This was great, positively great. All the gunner had to do was step up to the door, kick it open, and pump thirty or forty slugs into my body.
The thought moved me to action. I got to my knees and crept to the screening. Cautiously, I lifted my head above the wooden part of the cabin and peered through the mesh. There wasn’t much of a moon, and the area around the cabin was covered with blackness. I listened intently.
I could hear the noises of the insects, and the sound of my own breathing in the cabin. I kept listening, waiting.
There was a sudden snap outside, then silence. Immediately, I flicked on the flash, aiming it at the sound. I saw a pants leg dart into the bushes, and I saw the stock of a rifle. I snapped off the light just as another shot ripped through the screen.
“I’ve got a gun,” I yelled through the screen, lying through my teeth. “Show your filthy face and I’ll fill it full of holes.”
I listened, heard a rustling through the bushes. The rustling grew more frantic, getting softer, and then it stopped altogether. I supposed my sniper had gone, but I waited anyway. In a few minutes, the high whine of a speedboat engine filled my ears. It roared into life, idled for a moment, and then gunned away into the night, fading in the distance.
I stood way down below the wood and snapped on the flash again. There were no shots. I took off one of my shoes and held it up to the screen, still keeping myself covered below the wooden planking.
I got up then, sure that whoever had taken the shots at me was gone. I played the light around the room, found the holes in the screen where the slugs had gone out on the other side of the cabin. They were probably on the bottom of the lake now. Cautiously, I opened the door and stepped outside.
I worked my way up to where I’d spotted the sniper and swung the flash over the ground. The ground was hard, with no footprints on it. I examined the twigs on the bushes, looking for bits of cloth, anything. There was nothing.
All I knew about the sniper was that he wore dark trousers and carried a rifle.
That was a lot to go on. A hell of a lot.
I took it and went home.
I was lying on my bed, back in my own cabin, looking down at the black bra, when the knock came.
I shoved the bra under my pillow and asked, “Who is it?”
“Guess,” Lois answered as she opened the door.
She was wearing a white jacket with patch pockets and a high collar. She wore her hair in a horse’s tail that shone blackly against the white of her jacket.
She also wore black slacks.
“I saw your light,” she said. “I was just getting ready for bed.”
I looked at the black slacks and said, “Oh?”
Lois stared at me curiously. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I answered. “Sit down, won’t you?”
“I can’t stay long,” she told me. “Jean and Sam are still up. They’re playing cards.”
I thought of the pot shots a little earlier tonight. “How long have they been playing?”
“Hours,” she said. “I got bored, but I didn’t see your light until just now.” She paused. “Out for another look at the lake?”
“Yep,” I said.
“You’re not very talkative tonight.”
“Nope.”
She stepped a little closer, and I sat up, my legs hanging over the side of the bed.
“Angry?”
“Hell, no,” I said.
She reached over and touched my cheek. “Don’t be.”
“Why should I be?”
She shrugged. “Maybe you don’t like the idea of my coming over.”
“I like it fine,” I said.
She grinned happily. “I came to invite you to a party.”
“Good. When is it?”
Her lips parted, and her teeth looked sharp again. Her face was flushed, a high color in her cheeks, the color that had been there this morning in the cooktent.
“I really can’t stay,” she said, more to herself than to me.
“I didn’t ask you to, honey.”
“I know, you bastard,” she grinned. “You might have, though.”
“When’s the party?” I asked.
“
Tomorrow night. On Big Burnt.”
“Oh?”
“Um-huh. Some of Johnny’s friends are throwing it. They’re fun. You’ll like them.”
I nodded, wondering which of Johnny’s friends had tossed those shots at me tonight.
“Everyone is going,” Lois went on. She pulled a wry face. “Even my sister and her charming husband.”
“Nice,” I said.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Well, may I have the honor of your presence?”
“Oh. Sure, sure.”
She clasped her hands together in mock ecstasy. “And you will escort me, sir?”
“Sure,” I said, smiling in spite of myself.
“Good,” she said curtly, heading for the door. “I’ve got to go, Steve. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Goodnight,” I called.
“’Night.”
I listened to her footsteps crunching away on the loose rocks outside. I lay on the bed listening until they faded away and were no more. Sighing deeply, I rose and sat with my chin cupped in my hands for several moments. I shook a cigarette from the pack on the end table then, lighted it, and started to do a little thinking.
I didn’t like the way it added up; I didn’t like it one little bit.
This was supposed to be my vacation. I mean, what the hell! A guy slaves like a dog fifty weeks out of the year. When he finally gets the two weeks he’s been looking forward to during the past fifty, he finds a dead body, gets shot at, and God knows what the hell next.
I didn’t like it.
I was almost tempted to pack my toothbrush and go home. When I finally fell asleep, it was with a heavy frown on my forehead, and a mixture of anger and sadness in my heart.
CHAPTER SIX
The next day, after three good meals and ten times as many dips in the lake, I had changed my mind slightly. I’d stick it out a while longer, at least until the next hunter decided it was open season on Steve Richmond.
After supper, I filled the large basin with water from the lake, carried this up to the cooktent, and set it on the table outside. I carried the dishes over and got to work on them, a cigarette dangling from my lip.