by P. N. Elrod
Chapter Eleven
THOUGH IT HAD been a solid and busy six months since his last visit to International Freshwater Transport's warehouse, Escott's memory needed no prodding on how to get there. He picked out the fastest possible route, pausing only to chafe at stop signals. At this hour most of the intersections were empty, so the wait was doubly hard, but he wasn't about to attract attention by running through them. A curious cop was the last thing we wanted.
I was having trouble deciding if the tightness in my gut was due to Marian's assault or the situation we were walking into. Maybe it was a bit of both. Now that I had time to rest and take inventory, more aches stood up to be counted, especially along my spine. My lower legs and head were still the worst; I'd have to tend to them before anything else.
Eyes shut to concentrate, I tried to vanish. Except for a faint shiver running over my skin, nothing happened. My head throbbed in protest.
Damned wood.
I waited a few more blocks and tried again, failed, and waited some more. Each attempt got me farther down the line; on the fourth try, I finally melted away into the air.
Escott made a choking sound and the car swerved. It startled me back into solidity.
"What's going on?" I grabbed the arm rest for balance.
"Would you mind giving a fellow a little warning before you launch into that bloody Cheshire cat routine of yours?" he complained, looking very put out.
He usually held things in, but events were also eating him up from the inside. I couldn't blame him for letting it show for once. "Sorry. I have to do it again. Consider yourself warned. "
He grunted and kept his eyes on the road.
I faded into a wonderfully numbing nothingness better than any salve, and stayed there. The only problem was trying to hover in one spot: I tended to keep moving forward whenever the car braked. The windshield glass and metal body of the car helped to confine me inside; the trick was remembering to hold in place on my end of the seat. It wouldn't do to distract Escott further by bumping into him with an abrupt rush of cold.
"We're here," he announced, his voice made distant by my invisibility.
I was reluctant to return, but when I did, things didn't hurt nearly so much. The skin on my legs had stopped burning and my head felt only slightly tender. A day's rest, a stop at the Stockyards, and I'd be. . .
"They're not exactly secretive, are they?" he commented, drawing my attention to the front of the warehouse.
"The gang's all here," I agreed.
Parked along the street were two identical Caddies and my Buick. In this drab neighborhood they stuck out like birthday cakes at a funeral. A light was on in the warehouse office, the rest of the windows were dark. If my heart had still been working, it'd have been trying to thump its way out of my chest.
"Anything wrong?"
I nodded. "Not twenty minutes ago I wanted to kill her; now I'm here to play Douglas Fairbanks and rush to her rescue. "
"After what you've been through, your reluctance is understandable. " Escott had one hell of a gift for understatement.
"It's more than reluctance. I'm ready to say to hell with it and leave her there. "
"And will you?"
That question demanded more thought than I had time to give it. "I want to, but if I stay, then you'll go in instead, won't you?"
He said nothing, though for him it made for an eloquent speech. He'd go, all right, with or without me, and I wasn't about to let him do anything so crazy.
I laughed once, and not because I was happy, then started shrugging out of my overcoat. Escott's borrowed suit coat went, too. The cold wouldn't bother me for some time yet, and I wanted to be free to move. I tore off my rumpled tie and tossed it on the pile.
"Are you sure you're in shape for this?" he asked.
"Why? What do I look like? No, don't answer that. Let's just say that I'm in better shape than they think I am. You got a gun?"
"Yes. " In addition to the stolen Webley-Fosbury, he owned a much smaller snub-nosed Colt revolver, which he started to draw from his coat pocket.
"Hang on to it for yourself," I told him. "If any rats get past me, you'll need it. "
He saw the logic and kept the gun. "Good hunting. "
"Break a leg. "
We got out at the same time, swinging the doors shut, but not letting them latch.
The plan was for me to go in first and scout around for the best opportunity to get Marian out. If it didn't exist, then I'd have to make one. Escott was to back me up if it became necessary. Knowing how crazy Kyler and his stooges got when crossed, I was going to be damned careful.
Though they looked deserted, I checked each of the cars to make certain of the fact. Escott followed and we ended up crouched in the same patch of shadow cast by one of the Caddies.
"I'd like to cut off their lines of retreat," he whispered.
"As long as it's quiet. "
He flashed a rare smile or a rictus grin, I couldn't really tell, and eased open the driver's door. He felt under the dashboard a moment and something snapped in his hand. He darted to the other Caddy, performed the same operation, and returned.
"That should put them in the shop for a while," he said.
"What about my car?"
"I'm hoping we may simply drive it out. Have you the keys?"
"Still in my pocket. Hodge must have hot-wired it. "
Ideally, we wanted a clean getaway without any legal fuss. Escott was ready to use his gun, but it'd be better for us if he didn't. It was up to me to make sure things stayed quiet.
I crept up to the front door of the warehouse, feeling rather vulnerable in the dim light thrown out by its overhead bulb. I listened for some time, my ear pressed to the crack between the door and jamb and heard nothing. Shrugging a negative back at Escott, I pointed to myself and then toward the door. He gave me a thumbs-up in acknowledgment, turned gray, and ceased to exist.
Filtering through the same narrow crack was easy enough, then I made a quick sweep of the small room. It was empty and hadn't changed much since my last visit, as I discovered after materializing. An extra layer of grime and an oil heater had been added, but nothing more interesting. The second door leading into the warehouse proper was shut. I listened there for a time and eventually caught the faint sound of voices. One of them seemed to be Hodge's, but I wasn't sure.
I quietly unlocked the front door for Escott, then slipped through the inner door myself. I stayed invisible and felt my way around to what I hoped was a concealed corner and faded in slowly, eyes wide, and ears straining.
The place was vast and dark and the high ceiling caused the voices to echo deceptively, though I eventually pinned down their direction. I took my time approaching, half of it in a semitransparent state to avoid making sound myself. This lasted until I got a third of the way into the warehouse and ran into a familiar obstacle. The place was built well out over the river to expedite the transfer of goods to and from cargo ships. It was fine for the ships, but lousy for me with my inherent problem with running water. I'd be able to vanish easily enough; coming back again was the hard part. To do that, I had to be over land.
I went solid and tiptoed forward, then had to dig my heels in and really work. The resistance was like trying to push a long, heavy curtain back from the bottom, hard to get started and reluctant to keep moving. Once I was well out over the river I was all right, but as they say, the first step's a lulu. At least now my hearing wouldn't be handicapped.
They were at the far end of the long line of crates, using only a single work light, the kind with a handle and cord at one end and a hook on the other. They'd hung it awkwardly onto the lip of an open crate. It made a harsh fan of localized glare; odds were, they'd be fairly night blind outside of it. I moved closer.
Chaven was busy digging through the crate; stray drifts of excelsior littered the floor around him. He strained and lifted out a hunk of new-looking metal. I di
dn't know what it was beyond the fact that it looked like the internal part of a larger machine and that it was obviously heavy. He tossed it ponderously onto the floor with other, similar parts. The light on the crate shook as he worked. Shadows jostled one another.
"That enough?" he asked, straightening.
Kyler stood just behind the light and was difficult to see. "More. "
"But that's over a hundred pounds. "
"More. Those things get buoyant. I'm not risking a floater. "
"Have a heart, my back's killin' me. " But Chaven began digging again, pulling out piece after piece.
In the floor a couple of yards behind him gaped a trapdoor into darkness. Hodge sat on its edge, his legs resting on steps going down under the warehouse. I heard and smelled water.
"You can help," Chaven said to him.
"I've done my part. " Hodge patted the spot under his left arm where his gun was bolstered. I went very still and cold.
"If you want to stay here all night that's your business. There, that's two hundred pounds at least. Okay?"
"Take it down," said Kyler.
"Huh. " Chaven bent, picked up a part in each hand, and walked up to Hodge.
Hodge obligingly moved over to give him better access to the steps. Chaven grunted
"huh" again and descended. He was gone for about two minutes, then returned empty-handed to take away two more parts.
I slipped back the way I came and made a fast and hopefully quiet round of the stacks. When I moved toward the light once more, I was behind Kyler, all but looking over his shoulder. The work light wasn't in my eyes so much from this angle. Now I could see Marian, a dark form in her long coat.
She wasn't moving. She lay on her side, huddled compactly at the foot of a tall packing case. It was the same one they'd hacked me up against only last night. A ball of ice formed down in my stomach and rolled a little. Closing my eyes didn't help.
She was still there when I opened them.
Hardly aware of it, I walked up to Kyler and gave him a solid punch in the kidney, one that Escott could appreciate. He dropped almost too fast for me to catch him, but I managed and held him up in front of me.
Hodge was alert enough to notice and react. He drew his gun and jumped to his feet, trying to squint past the light to his boss.
Kyler almost jabbed my gut with his elbow, but he didn't have enough force or follow through. In return, I slapped the side of his head. Once was all that was needed, then he had to have my full support to stand.
"Boss?" Hodge skirted the trapdoor. He saw me, or part of me. The light was still in his eyes, but he had enough of a target to aim at. He held the gun ready.
I made sure Kyler was entirely in his way. "Put it up, Hodge, not unless you think you can shoot through your boss. "
"Who. . . ?"
"Besides, he said I had until tomorrow. . . remember?"
The stunned look on his face indicated that he did. "You go to hell," he said, but there was a crack in his voice. He was plenty scared.
"Not this time. "
I pushed Kyler ahead of me. He tried to fight, but I had a solid grip on his arms and was practically holding him off the floor. Hodge took a better aim at me but Kyler stopped him.
"Get behind him, you jerk! Shoot him from cover!"
Hodge's reflexes were good. Two fast steps, and he was swallowed up in the shadows between the stacks. I dragged Kyler out of the fan of light and shook him the way a kid shakes a rag doll. He was too dazed to resist as I went through his pockets. Right away I found his gun and pulled it. I didn't have enough hands to use it and let it drop to the floor. In his inside pocket with his wallet was the black velvet bag. It still seemed to weigh a ton.
He recovered quickly and just enough to be inconvenient. I shoved the bracelet away and threw him toward the trapdoor. Arms flailing, he tumbled right into it with a brief yell. Another yell in another voice matched him for surprise and pain.
Chaven must have been coming up the stairs when Kyler fell through onto him. They made a lot more noise rolling and crashing all the way to the bottom, and then they stopped making noise altogether.
I forgot them when Hodge fired his first shot at me. I was nearly deafened by the roar, but felt nothing. Seeing me come back from the dead must have left him with a bad case of the shakes. So much the better, since I wasn't ready to vanish just yet.
Gray smoke from the gun hung in the motionless air, giving away his hiding place. I went low and scuttled over to Marian. Me fired again, missing completely.
"Boss? Chaven? You okay?" He sounded very worried. I didn't think it was for their skins, but for his own. Armed or not, he didn't want to face me by himself.
Neither of us heard an answer from the trap.
I turned to Marian, checking for a pulse, but I was way too late. It was sad to say, but the only honest regret I felt was for her father.
"This is your work, Hodge," I heard myself shouting. The echoes filled the place, chasing each other into nothing.
"I did what I was told," he shouted back.
"Kyler gets his turn later. "
Shot.
He'd moved. The bullet creased air next to my left ear and tore into the case behind me.
Shot.
But by that time I was moving as well and dropped flat.
Shot.
One in Marian's heart and five embedded in the crates. If he carried a round ready in the chamber, it meant he had at least two more bullets left, maybe a lot more if he had a spare magazine. Not that it mattered much to either of us in the long run. He could be packing a Thompson with a full drum and it wouldn't help him. But I couldn't afford to let myself be hit any more than a normal man could, not while I was over water.
No shot. He must have realized he was running short. Good. I didn't want to have to remind him and possibly tip my own hand.
Silence, except for his breathing, then came a stealthy step and a shifting of cloth.
He was on the other side of the stack from me and creeping forward. He stopped for a long time to listen and perhaps puzzle out why I'd left Kyler's gun behind. I hadn't thought of it at the time, but now I could see that it was turning into an excellent piece of bait.
At the far end of the warehouse a door creaked open.
That had to be Escott, drawn in by the shooting.
Hodge jumped into the open, intent on Kyler's gun. I broke away from the stack and went after him.
He heard me charging up, whirled, and got off one more shot.
It went wild. Before he could trigger another, I tackled him, and we fell flat.
His head thumped against the floor and the whites of his eyes showed for a few seconds. He gagged, trying to recover his lost breath. He still had the gun, though, and enough presence of mind left not to use it until it could do him some good.
We were matched for weight, but I had him on raw strength and was able to immobilize him easily enough. His reaction was frustration, not surprise, as he kept struggling and got absolutely and utterly nowhere. I had one hand holding fast onto his gun arm. It'd be a simple matter to crush his wrist. . .
Instead, I bent his hand around, forcing it in the direction I wanted. When he realized what I was doing, he thrashed and yelled, throwing all his desperate energy into a last scrabbling fight for life.
The gun was at half cock and as I found out when I pressed my finger on top of his trigger finger, had one round left. The sound was so loud I didn't really hear it, the muzzle flash blinded, the smoke burned.
I didn't know which I'd remember the longest: Hodge's terrified shriek, or the look on his face as it happened.
Limbs twitching and hands shaking, I stood away from him and swallowed back the laughter that surged up like a rush of bile in my throat. It helped when I turned my back to him. The exit wound was very bad and where most of the bloodsmell came from. Despite the evident and
total finality of that wound, he still looked alive.
I will not regret this. If I had to, I'd do it again.
A few steps and I was leaning against a crate, hiding my eyes from it all. The laughter hung heavily in the back of my throat, threatening to either choke me or turn into a sob. It wasn't finished; more work remained to be done. There was yet one more suicide to arrange, maybe two.
First I groaned in protest, then, as though a switch had been thrown, everything shut down at once. The laughter died to nothing; the sickness forming in my gut faded away. I looked around with new eyes and found corners to be just a little sharper than they'd been before, and colors were brighter. The light from the lamp was both harsh and beautiful. I'd turned crazy cold- a mechanical man about to perform an unpleasant but necessary job. This wasn't vengeance-no more than a butcher is vengeful against the animal he carves up.
I drew a long breath and let it filter slowly out as I walked past Marian and Hodge and closed my hand over Kyler's gun.
"Jack?"
He'd come up softly. I was too wrapped in my own silent hell to have noticed his approach but was not surprised to see him. Escott was my friend and I could trust him to be sensible in an emergency. He saw Marian right away and went to her and learned what I had learned. He shook his head and said something, but I didn't quite catch it. Then he turned around and saw the rest of the place.
He stared at Hodge's body lying at the narrow end of a spray of blood and brains.
The gun was loose in his hand now, but still pressed to his temple. That was wrong. I had to change the position slightly, to pull his hand back a bit to allow for the recoil of the shot.
"I'm taking care of it," I told Escott. "Don't worry about anything. " In my own ears I sounded extraordinarily calm, as though I were doing a household chore for him.
Like taking out the garbage.
Now he stared at me; I nodded back reassuringly and stooped to adjust Hodge's gun and arm. There, that looked more natural.
"We have to leave, Jack. " Escott did his best to match my calmness, but I knew better. His heart was racing fit to burst. My own was, or rather, my own wasn't. . .
Never mind that.
I smiled at him. "In a minute. This won't take long. "
Cheerful. Almost. That's what it sounded like. I wasn't feeling at all cheerful, but then I wasn't feeling, period.
I walked to the trapdoor and started down the stairs.
Below the reinforced flooring of the warehouse were the dozens of thick cement pillars that supported it. They marched away in even rows in every direction, their tops wrapped in dirty shadow, their bases sunk deep in the water. The river had left them stained and stinking. The stairs led to a broad wooden landing that rose and fell with the lap of water. Tied next to it was a sleek inboard; on its deck sat an open crate. It didn't take much genius work to figure out where Chaven had put the heavy machine parts. Once the lid was nailed down, they had only to take a quiet cruise out to deep water and Marian's body would disappear forever.
The closer I got to the water, the higher my back hairs rose. For a few seconds I had to fight to stay solid, so overwhelming was the instinctual urge to vanish and draw away to the safety of land.
Kyler and Chaven were still sprawled on the landing. Chaven was groggy but trying to pull himself together. Kyler bled from a cut over one eye and was rumpled all over, almost comic in his disarray. He squinted up at me without recognition. The light was bad here for human eyes. To him, I'd be a silhouette against a slightly lighter shadow.
"Hodge?" he asked, doubtful.
"Hodge shot himself. " Not quite true, but details like that didn't matter now.
"You're going to shoot yourself as well, Kyler. "
"What the hell. . . ?" said Chaven.
I raised my hand high so they could see what was in it. "I brought your gun along to do the job. " Had I been capable of . laughter, I might have laughed at their expressions.
Chaven woke up very fast and clawed inside his coat. I centered Kyler's gun on him.
"Jack. " Escott's voice.
"In a minute," I called back.
"You've no time left to make a proper job of it," he reasoned. "We have to go while we can. "
That made a lot of sense, but I hated to leave the work half-done when only another minute was all I. . .
Chaven got his gun out and fired. His aim was off because of the darkness and his own fear. The slug sang through my arm. Negligible damage anywhere else, sheer disaster here. I dropped Kyler's gun, staggered back against the rail, and forgot about everything but the necessity of remaining solid.
Shadows grew lighter, threatening to turn gray and vanish altogether. My hand was going transparent; I willed it back, ordering it to hold on to the stair railing, and not to slide through.
"Do you see? Do you see?" Kyler's voice. What the hell was he talking about?
I flickered back and forth between pain-filled reality and numbing dream. Escott shouted my name but I couldn't break my concentration to answer. Kyler and Chaven were limping away, stumbling into their boat, and I was helpless to follow.
While Kyler fumbled at the ropes, Chaven took aim for a second, more careful shot.
He hit his target, but for him the timing was ill judged, catching me in a semitransparent phase. The bullet whizzed right through my chest and smacked into one of the steps.
Before he could fire again, another gun went off. The roar so close above almost buried me in sound. It was all I could do to just hold on to the flimsy stair rail. I'd lost sight of everything except the bottomless black water that seemed to swell closer. . .
Escott grabbed my shirt collar and hauled me back. Kyler and Chaven swung into view once more. They were both in the boat now and blue smoke belched from it as Kyler got the motor started. He was doing all the work; Chaven was hanging on to the box and not doing much of anything besides cursing.
Kyler gunned the boat and it glided rapidly away from the landing. He held a straight course between the tall pillars until he was free of them, then turned onto the river and was gone.
"You had time for another clear shot, Charles," I said. "Why didn't you take them?"
Escott gave no direct answer to my question. "We have to go. Jack. "
The searing heat in my arm dissipated and with it the imminent threat of vanishing. Still sensitive to the pressure of the water all around, I was unable to do more than crouch on the stairs. Escott eased past me and retrieved Kyler's gun. He slipped on the safety and dropped it in his pocket. Coming back up, he held his hand out to me.
"Come along, old man. It's very cold down here or have you even noticed it yet?"
With his help, I found my feet and we trudged up and emerged from the trapdoor. He steered me well around the awful tableau framed by the work light, and we headed toward the distant front door.
"Are the cops coming?" I asked.
"It's best that we leave before we find out," he said, not really answering again.
What was the matter with him?
The inner door was open and he left it that way. He did the same thing with the outside door, leaving it wide. We stopped at his car and he had me put on my overcoat. As he'd guessed, I hadn't noticed the cold. I felt nothing at all.
He took me to my own car and asked if I could drive it. It seemed an odd question, but I said yes and got in. He told me to go straight home and promised that he'd be following right behind if I needed anything. I shook my head, a little puzzled, but strangely touched by his obvious concern.
We drove off quietly, obeying all the speed laws and traffic stops. For me it was another dream ride like the trip I'd taken earlier over to the Pierce house. I pulled up to my usual curbside spot in front of Escott's old three-story brick house. Escott broke away to park in the narrow garage behind the building. He reappeared quickly enough to walk with me up the steps and unlock the door.
The place was warm and, after the fresh outside air, stuffy with the smell of his favorite pipe tobacco. We shrugged out of our coats; I draped mine on the hall tree, he put his on a hanger, and then put the hanger on an empty peg. After that we went into the parlor. I sat in the leather chair by the radio and noticed my hands for the first time. They were very dirty and smelled all at once of wood smoke, cordite, and blood. A sickening combination, but I did not feel sick.
Escott went into the kitchen and dialed a number on the phone. His call was very short and he'd swapped his English accent for a German one. He gave the address of the warehouse and in a frightened voice complained of hearing gunfire, then hung up. He made a brief stop in the dining room before coming in to sit on the couch opposite. He must have poured half the contents of his bottle of good brandy into the glass in his hand.
"I wish you could have some as well," he said. "If anyone needed it. . . "
"Is something wrong?"
"No, Jack. " His answer was easy and reassuring. After a drink and a minute for the stuff to work into him, he said, "I expect what you really need is a very hot bath and some kip time. "
I blinked a little, thinking it over. "That sounds good to me. "
He must have been holding his breath, for he visibly relaxed. "You go on up and do that, then. "
He seemed anxious for me to go, so I went to my room upstairs and peeled slowly out of my clothes as though shedding an old skin. Another layer came off in the hot water of the tub and yet another as I shaved. When I came downstairs again, my body felt better, but still strangely detached from my mind.
He was on the kitchen phone speaking in a low voice with a hushed shock that was only partly assumed. On the other end of the line it must have sounded sincere enough.
"I'm terribly sorry to hear that. . . They do?. . . Oh, there's no question about it, I shall come over immediately. Yes, of course. . . "
And so on, until he hung up.
"Pierce?" I asked.
He nodded. "Letting me know about the arson on his guest house. He thinks it's connected with his case and wants me to look at things. I don't know when I'll be back. Will you be all right?"
Again with the questions. "You want me along?"
"Not this time. Besides, you need the rest. "
Maybe he had a point there. "Does he know about Marian?"
His face grew longer. "Not yet. The police may not have had time to sort it out yet. Anonymous calls don't always send them bolting off to an immediate investigation. "
He left to get his coat. I noticed that he'd tidied the kitchen up from Harry Summers's visit. The empty brandy glass stood rinsed and drying with the others on the sink drain board. He wouldn't have wasted good brandy and I had no doubt that he'd properly finished it off, but his manner so far was stone-cold sober.
"I found this," I said when he returned to leave by the back door. I drew out the black velvet bag from my bathrobe pocket and put it on the table.
"Dear me. " He arrested his move to put on his hat and opened the little bag instead. He studied the bracelet for a while, turning it over and over in his long fingers. I wondered if it felt as heavy to him as it had to me.
"I thought you'd want to give it back to Pierce. "
He pursed his lips, managing to look thoughtful and horrified all at once. "No, I couldn't possibly-not at this point, at any rate. "
"The warehouse, then. Plant it on Marian, where it belongs. "
"We can't take that chance. As soon as the police get there, they'll be all over the place with their notes and cameras. It'd be impossible to smuggle it in, especially if Blair conducts the investigation. "
"Then mail it to Pierce. We sure as hell can't hang on to it. "
He balled the thing up in his fist, then poured it into the bag. "For the moment, we shall do exactly that. " He sounded like a man with an idea, but wasn't ready to share it yet. "You keep it for now until I have time to put it in the safe. It'll be all right in that vault of yours below stairs. "
It'd be just fine, but I didn't want to have any part of it. I also didn't have the energy left to tell him, so I meekly stuffed the bag back in my pocket.
He locked the back door behind him and soon had the Nash out of the garage and was gone. The house loomed huge and empty about me. The place must have been warm enough, but I suppressed a shiver.
Without thinking much about it, I vanished and seeped through the floor to the walled-off alcove directly below the kitchen. It was so much faster than using the basement stairs and had the added attraction of taking me out of the world for a few moments. It was some time before I returned to solidity.
The room was hot and still. The lamp was on, just as I'd left it when I'd walked through the wall to find out why Escott wanted to interrupt my writing. Had that happened only last night? I squinted at the neatly typed sheets as though they were someone else's property. They were. I felt quite different from the earnest would-be writer that had typed them, different in that I wasn't feeling anything at all.
A tremor ran up my spine in the hot little room.
Bobbi's photo smiled at me from the makeshift desk. It was a studio portrait, done by the best in the city and glamoured up, though with Bobbi they didn't have to work very hard. She had one of those faces that the camera practically makes love to; all she ever had to do for a drop-dead photo was to smile.
I started to pick it up for a closer look and noticed my hand was trembling. I gripped it with the other, but it was just as out of control.
No regrets, remember?
The trembling spread from my hands to my arms and joined up with the tremor in my back. I couldn't seem to hold it down or stretch out of it.
No regrets, so why was every nerve in my body starting to scream? I rolled onto the cot and its layer of earth and shook and shook and shook and never once stopped until the sun came up at last and released me from the night's terrors.