Ten p.m. That would make it only an hour or so since the shooting. Time enough for those papers to be destroyed, of course; but if Mitchell still had them, he'd want to hang onto his paper club. There was still a chance that everything would work out.
And right then I realized what had been nagging me a minute ago. It had been when the nurse was talking about the bullet still being in me. If I'd been here for close to an hour, I wondered why that slug hadn't been taken out of my chest by now. The thought bothered me.
“Shell.” Elaine still looked worried. Scared, even.
“What's the matter?”
“I—when I arrived, I parked in front of the hospital. While I was waiting to see you, I saw another car arrive with some men in it. One of them looked over my car, then went to it and opened the door. I think he read the registration thing.” She paused, hands clasped tightly together. Then she went on, “It was the man who did that bird act at the Red Rooster. The one you followed last night.”
Joe Navarro.
Hell yes, Navarro—and more. Every hood who'd ever been after me would know I was here in Martin's. If Elaine had heard a broadcast about Shell Scott getting shot up, then the hoods would have heard it too or heard about it—Goss and Silverman included. I lifted my arms up a little way and let them flop back onto the bed.
It wasn't a gesture of hopelessness, though the outlook appeared dim at this point, but a trapped feeling combined with a sort of futile fury. I'd have liked getting my fingers around Navarro's throat now more than ever before, and I couldn't even squeeze my left hand into a fist without pain.
I said, “Navarro and how many other men? And how long ago was this?”
“Two others were with him. Ten or fifteen minutes ago.”
“Yeah. He must have recognized your car. They know you were on the Srinagar with Belden, left with him. If they didn't know what your car looked like before, you can bet they found out in a hurry, certainly, since today's broadcast.”
I grunted to a sitting position, holding the sheet in front of me with my right hand. Beneath the sheet was just me. They'd taken my clothes—and I had to have something to wear, even if it was only this big diaper here.
Elaine said, “What are you doing?”
Dizziness swept over me and for a moment the room turned gray. But not black. In a few seconds my vision cleared, and I said, “When I told you I felt like getting out of here, it was a gag. It isn't any longer. Somehow, we're leaving.”
“But Shell, you've got a bullet in you! You've got to—”
“And one is enough. They'll have to probe for the next one in my head.”
She was still wringing her hands together. “I—after what happened last night, and now, I suppose you're right.”
“I know I'm right.”
She swallowed. “I'll help. If I can. But—”
“I'm not as bad off as I look. I always look this way. I keeled over mainly from shock—I was really shocked to see those guys shooting at me—and because I was physically and emotionally depleted. I could have keeled over without getting shot. I've had about six hours sleep in the last sixty, I've had knives and saps swung at me, been half drowned and steamed practically to death—”
“Steamed? When did ... Steamed?” She looked puzzled.
I shuddered and went on rapidly, “Besides, I've just had an hour's rest. I can navigate all right. If you could get out of here and—”
I groaned. The fat was really in the fire. I couldn't even let Elaine leave this room without me, not with Navarro maybe right outside, and no telling who else.
She said, “Maybe I could drive my car around to the side entrance—”
“No, baby. They've spotted it now. Not only do they know we're both here, they'll have an eye on your buggy. We've got to stay away from it.”
“What—will we do, Shell?”
I didn't answer her. I was thinking. Or at least what passes for thinking in my set. Any man who got himself—and a lovely woman—into the mess we were in had to have mental processes about on the level of the armor-plated rhinoceros. The armor-plated rhinoceros, incidentally, is not noted for its brilliance. I was starting to sweat again.
Elaine was saying, “Surely nobody can come in here and shoot you or anything, can they? If that's what you're thinking. Not here.”
“Maybe you're right. But the odds are you're wrong. And the hell of it is, honey, there're two of us to shoot if there's any shooting. All sorts of accidents can happen, even in a hospital—I know.”
“Well, but—shouldn't you wait until they get the bullet out of you at least? It might poison you or do something awful. By now Doctor Fischer must be almost ready for you.”
“We can't wait. And, honey, I'm not on my death bed. I've seen Marines shot clear through their bodies with rifle slugs and go on fighting for an hour before they...”
Then what she'd said got through to me. I looked dully at Elaine. “Who did you say?”
“Doctor Fischer, whoever he is. The nurse told me he'd be ready any minute, so I couldn't stay long. What's the matter?”
I was staring blankly at the wall. Her words brought me back. “Doctor Fischer, huh?” I said. “That's great. That's all I need. That guy should operate in the morgue.”
“What?”
“Honey, he will go in for that bullet by way of my gizzard. He may even start at my left toe, and just rip his way up.”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
“Never mind. There's no time to tell you now. But it's settled. We're leaving.”
A thought struck me then. I had little doubt about what Dr. Fischer would do to me when and if he got me anesthetized on an operating table. But if I were right, and Fischer was supposed to take care of me, that also meant Navarro wouldn't be pulling anything unless the operation was a failure—and I lived. So maybe this was a break.
I felt pretty good, weak, but I'd be able to move around okay, I thought. The pain didn't bother me, and I had been given emergency treatment by the ambulance boys. A bandage was taped to my chest, gauze wound around my body. I got to my feet, wrapped in the sheet, walked across the room and back. The legs were wobbly, but usable.
Then I sat down and racked my brain for a way out.
A minute passed, then I said to Elaine, “Where's this room located?”
“Near the end of the east wing. The door at the end of the hallway comes out on the east side of the building.”
That meant from the door it would be only a few steps up the side street to Maplewood, and then two blocks to Mitchell's place. “Okay. Another thing—”
I didn't have time to finish. The door opened, and the nurse came in. “I'm sorry,” she said to Elaine, “but you'll have to leave now.” Then to me, “Oh, you shouldn't be sitting up.”
“I'm all right. Bring a phone in here, will you?”
She blinked. “I can't do that. There's no place to connect one, anyway.”
“Well ... show me where a phone is.”
“That's out of the question! You can't be walking around. And I'd be discharged if I—”
“Okay, never mind. It probably wouldn't work anyway.” I thought a moment and said, “This Dr. Fischer who's going to help me. He a resident surgeon here or something?”
“No, somebody phoned the Director and requested special attention for you and said not to worry about the expense. He wanted Dr. Fischer—he's very expensive—to handle your case.” She smiled. “You must have some extremely influential friends.”
“Yeah. They'd do anything to me. That's why the slug's still in me, huh? You had to wait for the special doctor?” She nodded and I said, “That's nice. I've got to see Dr. Fischer. Immediately.”
“Oh, but he won't be in to see you. He's already in surgery. You're to be taken—”
“I think he'll come. If you'll do me the favor of telling him something for me. Okay?”
She nodded.
“Tell Dr. Fischer it's important to him that I
see him. It's about a dead man in the showcase, and a man named Lime. That's all.”
She frowned but said she'd do it. I asked her if she knew where my car was, and she said she supposed it was wherever I'd left it. It hadn't been brought into the lot.
“Would you tell Dr. Fischer right now, please?”
She went out, closing the door. I said to Elaine, “Honey, we're in this together, whether we like it or not. If I leave, we leave together.”
“You couldn't get rid of me anyway, Shell. That's why I came here, you know. Maybe I can help.”
“You're the damnedest woman.”
“At least I'm not shot in the chest.”
“Not yet, at least.” I grinned at her, and it was to be the last grin for quite a while. “Besides, if anybody shot that chest, I'd live long enough, even with bullets rattling in my ears, to strangle him.”
She smiled and said something very nice.
Then the interlude was over. I stood up and looked around the room. I needed a heavy object that I could manage with one hand, and a satisfactory item was on the little table across the room. It was a water pitcher, big enough and heavy, the bottom about an inch thick. I picked it up, hefted it, and decided to leave the water in it to make it even heavier.
Then I turned to Elaine. “I guess you know what I'm going to do.”
“Well, nearly every time I see you, you hit somebody, so I suppose—”
“Exactly. Stay out of sight, and if anything goes wrong run down the corridor screaming and just keep screaming till there's about a hundred people around you. Then stay with the hundred people. Yell for cops. If you can, get to a phone and call Captain Samson at Homicide, have him send some men here. With luck, maybe I can do that myself, but just in case—you do it.”
She didn't say anything. In another minute the nurse came in and said Dr. Fischer would be here in a few moments. She went back into the corridor again. I moved to the door, and waited.
I heard his voice outside. “Nurse, you won't need to remain here. I'll arrange for the patient's removal.”
That sure sums it up, I thought. Fischer didn't want any other ears listening to what I might have to tell him, it seemed. He didn't know that not even his ears would be listening.
The door opened, and he came into the room. It was Dr. Fischer, all right, the heavy-set, bulbous-nosed guy I'd seen at the showcase and talked to at the County Hospital after Lime's death. A worried look was on his face as he stepped inside, glancing toward the bed. His brows pulled down when he noticed the empty bed, and then he spotted me from the corner of his eye.
“Wha—” The word didn't quite get out of his mouth.
He was turning toward me as he gasped the word, but by then I was swinging. The heavy glass pitcher was moving at the end of my arm, coming down from over my head, and the heavy base caught him about an inch above his ear. The pitcher broke, water splashing over him and the floor, and he went down silently.
His clothes were a bit loose and short for me, but they fit well enough, and in two minutes I was dressed. The hole in my chest had opened, and I could feel blood seeping into the bandage, but otherwise all was okay so far. I said to Elaine, “We'll go out together. Come on.”
She looked pale. Pale, but game. And ready to go. I opened the door and went out first. The corridor was empty. Elaine stayed beside me as we walked down the corridor. I could feel the muscles in my legs and back tightening more with every step. “Oh, golly,” Elaine said, then was quiet.
We made it to the door. Outside, street lights threw dim illumination onto the trees lining the side street and onto the hospital steps. I glanced back as we went through the wide doorway. Behind us, the corridor was still empty. I breathed easier, feeling we had a good chance now.
We walked to the corner, then turned left on Maplewood Way. Two blocks away was my Cad. At least I hoped it was there. “Step it up,” I said to Elaine.
“But can you—”
“Baby, if I have to, I can run. Let's move.”
We didn't run, but we did use up plenty of energy walking from the hospital. Those two blocks ahead of us seemed like two miles. We made one block with no trouble. Then I heard voices behind us, shouts back at Martin's. I couldn't make out what they were yelling, but I could guess.
We covered another half block before I heard the car. When I looked back, I saw it rip from the hospital lot into the street. And right then I didn't think about anything but Elaine, couldn't think about anything but her. For a moment my mind was a blank while I tried to figure where she could go, how she could get away. Maybe into one of the houses—but they would know she couldn't be far away. And my Colt was back at the hospital, with my clothes. That wasn't all though. If the Cad's keys weren't on the floorboards where I'd dropped them before passing out.... I refused to think about it.
The car raced into the street and turned—away from us. They hadn't seen us, just knew we were gone. It was a break. But they'd be back.
“Run, baby,” I said. If we got to the car, if we could have even half a minute, maybe we could make it.
Elaine trotted ahead of me, staggered and almost fell. I didn't stop, kept going past her, building up speed, heart hammering and the ache in my chest spreading clear down into my stomach. Behind me her heels clicked on the sidewalk, getting fainter.
I reached the Cad, yanked the door open and ran my hand over the floorboards, searching for the keys. For agonizing moments I couldn't find them. But then my fingers touched them, and I grabbed the things and stuck the ignition key into the switch as I slid under the wheel.
For a miserable moment I remembered the bomb that had earlier been under the hood, but I jammed my teeth together and turned the key. The engine caught, roared. Elaine reached the car as I slipped it into gear. We were parked facing Martin's Hospital, and as Elaine opened the door on her side a car skidded around the corner three or four blocks away and raced toward us, lights looming in the dim street. It had come around the corner so fast that it swerved sharply before straightening out; I heard its tires scream over the asphalt.
We couldn't make it. There wasn't time for a U-turn; they'd be on us in seconds. There was no question about who it was in that car now, either. I made up my mind as Elaine flopped on the seat beside me. At the moment when she landed, before she even had the door closed, I jammed my foot down on the gas. The Cad leaped forward, pressing us both back against the seat, and the sudden lurch slammed the door violently shut. The other car was less than half a block away when I shot out into the street toward it, angling straight at them from the curb. I reached for the lights with my left hand, and gasped aloud at the momentarily forgotten pain that lanced through my chest. But I forced my hand forward, grabbed the knob and pulled it out when we were only yards from the car. As my lights blazed on and splashed over the car I jerked the wheel right. If that driver didn't veer away, we'd still crash—but he did.
He must have hit his brakes and jerked on the wheel with the suddenness of panic because the car's tires shrieked and it swung hard to the right, skidding, heading for the curb. We missed them by inches.
And I saw the man at the wheel as we went by.
It was the moulting-hawk face of Joe Navarro. His mouth was wide, as if he were yelling. Another man was next to him on the front seat, one or more others in the back. I couldn't count them, but I saw movement behind Navarro.
Then we were past, the sudden yank I'd given the steering wheel sending us plunging toward the curbing. I wrestled the wheel back, and we straightened out, swaying. “Watch them,” I snapped at Elaine. “Keep your eye on that car.”
She moved on the seat beside me, twisted to look behind us. “They—they...” She stopped, gasping. But then after some shuddering breaths she said, “They're sideways, stopped. But—now they're backing up.”
I'd counted the blocks from where we'd been. We'd covered three so far; before they were on our tail and moving we'd have another block or more on them. It wasn't enough. Not by f
ive or ten miles it wasn't enough.
I kept my foot down to the floor. We were still gaining speed, and on a straight stretch I knew the Cad would outdistance them. But this was far from downtown L.A., an area I wasn't familiar with. All I knew was that the road curved off toward the Santa Monica Mountains, but I didn't know where any of the side roads went. I couldn't afford to take one that led to a dead end, either; not without a gun. Already we were out of the residential area, starting slightly uphill.
“Do you know where we are?” I asked Elaine.
“I've been on this road. But I don't know. I'm so—I don't remember.”
“You'd better remember.” I stopped, dizziness climbing up into my head again. It seemed as if the headlights dimmed. I should have been flat on my back in a bed, and the exertion of running, the strain of tugging at the steering wheel, had drained away most of the strength I had left.
“Elaine, if I head off the road or—or something, grab the wheel.” I could still see the speedometer dial and the needle was at sixty, falling back. Without being conscious of it I had slowed down. I pushed my right foot forward again.
“Shell—oh, Shell, don't ... pass out on me.” Her voice was high and tight.
“Slap me. Slap the living daylights out of me.”
I didn't have to tell her twice. She leaned over and walloped me with the back of her hand, cracked it into my cheek again. It felt as if a truck had run over my head, but when my skull stopped wobbling everything was bright and sharp once more.
She had her hand hauled back for another one, but I yelled, “Hey! That's enough. Don't knock me clear out through the door.”
She clasped her hands together, squeezing them tight.
“Honey, I'm sorry,” I said. “About this ... you know what I mean. There isn't time to tell you.”
“Maybe—maybe they won't hurt us. Even if they catch us.”
“No, baby. Take my word for it. I know who's back there, and exactly what they'll do if they catch us. They'll kill us.”
And right then, as if to prove me absolutely correct for once, a bullet crashed through the windshield high at its left. Immediately afterwards the sound of a shot reached me, then a second and third crack carried to us through the air. Only the first slug hit the car; but there'd be more.
Over Her Dear Body Page 18