Find This Woman

by Richard S. Prather

  "How do you mean, taken dead?"

  "Accident. Apparently Big Jim was walking around on the highway out beyond the Flamingo and a car hit him. The sheriff wondered what the guy was doing there—not a damn thing out there—and he asked a lot of people, including Dante, about it. Wound up an accident, though."

  "Interesting," I said. "Sounds like a convenient accident. For Dante."

  I finished my drink. "I suppose I'd better get with it. Don't feel a hell of a lot like it." I put the glass on the floor and let my arm dangle over the side of the bed. It would have taken too much energy to pull it back up.

  Freddy scowled. "You should get with some sleep. You look beat. How you gonna sleuth if you're dead?"

  He didn't mean a corpse, just beat, but he'd made two points without trying. I was so tired I wasn't sharp, and if I were literally dead. . .

  "Maybe you're right," I said. "O.K. if I pop off here for a couple?"

  "Make it three," he said. "I'll call you around nine or so."

  "Good deal, Freddy. Thanks. Maybe we'll get a chance to hang one on." I was almost asleep before I finished talking.

  The sirens woke me up. And from there on in it was hell in Helldorado.

  Chapter Six

  I WOKE UP slowly, the way I always do, and I heard the siren scream without even wondering, at first, what had awakened me. Even when I realized what was making the racket I associated it with L.A. for a second or two, wondering from force of habit where the boys were going. Then I remembered where I was as the sound of the siren grew from its faint beginning and shrilled inside my head when it passed the Desert Inn, going south on U.S. 91 out of town.

  I shook my head and blinked, remembering the stuff I had to do. Had to see Victor Dante. And I wanted into Carter's room, too, to check his stuff, see if there was anything in it that would help me. It might be best to ask Carter about that first, though, if I ever got the chance. And I had to start showing that picture around. Maybe Freddy could help me there. He met a hell of a lot of people across the bar, though most of them were just blanks, customers, guys rapping with silver dollars.

  I looked at my watch. Eight-thirty. Might as well get going. The better than two hours' sleep had done me a lot of good. I was a little stiffer, but otherwise I felt better. I started to get up and noticed that Freddy had tossed a blanket over me, and my cordovans were side by side on the floor. I grinned and got into the shoes, then splashed cold water on my face and began to feel human.

  Another siren was wailing, getting closer, and I began wondering what was causing all the commotion. I walked to the front of the room and stuck my head out the window as cars started pulling over to the side of the road to let a black radio car race by with its red spotlight blinking. I knew the city limits were the other side of Bingo's on the downtown side of the Strip, and that the Las Vegas police department has jurisdiction over only the four square miles of downtown Las Vegas. And we were out in county territory here, so those would be county cars: men from the sheriff's department I watched the bouncing taillight of the car as it went up toward the Flamingo and swung left at the curve and out of sight. They were sure in a hurry, but there wasn't anything beyond the Flamingo except desert and McCarran Field. That was right, the airport was out there.

  I got a little tickling sensation along my back. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to go out there and take a look. I made sure I had my .38, put on my coat, and went out and down the stairs to the edge of the lobby. I stood there for a moment remembering that I didn't have my Cad handy and I couldn't just stroll out to the airport. Then I remembered Colleen had said she was in Room 107. That was just off the lobby, around to my left here on the main floor, so I swung around, walked to her door, and knocked.

  She opened the door and smiled when she saw me.

  God, she was beautiful. I stared at her till she said, "Hi. Didn't know you'd be here so soon. You look like you're walking in your sleep."

  "Think I am. Hi."

  "Come on in, Shell."

  "I'd like to, but I come asking favors. Already. You mind?"

  "Depends on the favor."

  "You got a car?"

  "Last year's Mercury. Want a ride?"

  "I thought we might start getting better acquainted by following sirens. I'm curious. O.K.?"

  "Sure. That'll be different, anyway. Let's go."

  She was still dressed the same way she had been at the bar and she looked just as good or better, and I noticed that in addition to everything else she had the most beautiful legs in a long, long time. She got another point on the good side when all she had to do in order to leave was take three steps to the dresser, pick up her handbag, and come on out. She pulled the door shut and we started.

  Before we got into the looby, I said, "Hey, I'm not quite awake, and I didn't think. There's, uh, some people who don't like me. Even a chance somebody might take pot shots at me. Maybe I shouldn't have asked you to come."

  She blinked at me and stopped. "Are you serious?"

  "Uh-huh."

  She shook her head, then shrugged and started walking again. That was all. I followed her to the car, a dark green club coupé. She slid under the wheel and zoomed out of the curving drive with the tires screeching. She seemed to like getting things done in a hurry. I told her where the excitement seemed to be and she ripped out the highway getting there.

  The trouble was at the airport, all right. I told Colleen to pull in and she slowed down as we came to within a few feet of the center of activity. There was some confusion, and about twenty people were milling around over at the right of the airport building. The red spotlight on the top of one of the sheriff's black patrol cars pulsed bright and dim, bright and dim. I could hear harsh, impersonal voices barking orders and asking questions, and just then another car drove up with the siren muttering in its lowest register.

  Always when I first awaken I go around in a sort of sleepwalker's trance for a few minutes. But I was awake now and I knew I'd wanted to come out here because I'd thrown airport-Cadillac-sheriff-excitement all together in my mind and got a fluttery shiver along my spine. I reached into my coat pocket to make sure the car keys were there and I couldn't find them. I sat up straight and went through all my pockets, but there weren't any keys.

  And then I saw my car as some men moved away from the side of it, and at first, it's funny, but all I thought about was that my old ugly Cadillac was no good to me any more because the whole front end was ripped up, the metal of the hood twisted and gaping with holes and the windshield cracked and broken. It looked just as if a half-dozen sticks of dynamite had blown all to hell under the hood, and I started to grind my teeth together as anger boiled inside me and started to rise, and then it died out of me, died all the way out of me.

  Because I saw why the men at the side of the Cad had moved away; saw the limp body they were placing on the ground; even saw them starting to cover him up; and I got cold all over, felt the cold brush over all my skin, and I said, "Oh, my God. My God. Oh, my God, Freddy."

  Colleen said, "What's the matter? Shell, what's wrong?" But I couldn't answer her because my vision blurred all of a sudden and I couldn't do anything except put my forehead down in my hand and hold it and squeeze it as if somehow that could help take away the chill and the sickness. For a moment I didn't know what to say or even what to do, and then I got out of the car and walked over to the men gathered around the body on the ground.

  He was already covered, but I got down on one knee and pulled back the cloth over him and it was Freddy, as I'd known it would be, and his face looked almost the same, what was left of it, but the worst was high on his chest.

  I covered him up quickly because I just wanted to be positive, didn't really want to look at him at all. Then a uniformed deputy grabbed my arm.

  "Who the hell you think you are, Mac? Get away from the body."

  I squeezed my hands into fists, then stretched them open and turned away from him. He grabbed me again, his eyes squinting at me. "What
you doing here, anyway?"

  "Just. . . noticed the excitement. Somebody told me about it."

  "You know the guy?"

  "I knew him. From the Desert Inn." Then I added, and it was hard to say it, "He was a friend of mine, is all. Bartender at the hotel."

  "We know who he is."

  "How'd it happen?" I asked him.

  He acted as if he weren't going to answer, then he looked at the front of the Cad. "You can see, can't you? It blew up."

  "Not by itself, Officer."

  He shrugged. I walked away, wondering if he'd stop me, but he didn't. As I turned around I saw a man watching me, a man with a familiar face that I'd seen once before when he'd been looking at me from the near side of a blue Chrysler. He was about fifteen feet away, partly in shadow, and there was another man with him that I didn't recognize. The one I did know, a short, husky guy with a big nose and a bald head, turned to the other man and said something I couldn't hear.

  I turned away from them and started walking from the airport toward the street, far ahead of me. The highway was straight ahead and for about fifty yards there was some illumination, then there was darkness with the road out there invisible from here. I walked by the Mercury and Colleen looked out at me and said, "Shell, what is it? Tell me."

  I said, "Beat it. Get out of here." Then I kept walking toward the darkness with the airport at my back and the two men at my back, and I thought they'd follow me because I was supposed to have been in the Cad, not Freddy, and I hoped to God they did follow me.

  You know how something like that hits you? There's shock that numbs you for a while just as if you've been hurt physically. There are physical changes in your body, and maybe the backs of your knees feel like water and your skin gets cold and perspiration jumps out on your forehead. If it's bad enough you can get sick or faint or even have a heart attack. It had hit me hard and the shock had momentarily numbed me, but I was coming out of it enough already so that there was time and room for the anger to well up in me again. It was cold and brittle anger, and I knew it would stay with me for a long time.

  I took one quick look over my shoulder when I was about fifty feet from the building. The Mercury was still there, Colleen hadn't taken my advice, and halfway between it and me were two figures outlined against the brilliance behind them. I turned around again and walked slowly, but I pulled the .38 from under my coat and held it in front of me. The Special is a double-action revolver, so all I had to do was pull the trigger.

  I walked slowly, as if I were going nowhere, just walking away from what was back there, and I heard the footsteps, finally, close now. They came up almost to me and then the tempo of the footsteps increased suddenly and if this was anything at all, this was it. I waited another fraction of a second and jumped to my left, spinning around at the same time, and the little bald-headed man grunted and nearly stumbled as he tried to twist around, and he almost fell against the barrel of my .38. He stopped suddenly, his right hand a little above the level of his head, and the taller man behind him bumped gently into him as he stopped, too.

  There was little light, but there was enough so they could both see the gun, and I moved it slightly and said, "Move an inch and I'll kill you. Now hold it, just like that."

  They froze. The little man's right hand had been slowly coming down, but he stopped moving and stood with his hand almost even with his forehead, a little bit like a man saluting. Only he'd been getting ready to salute me with a sap that hung down from his fingers and extended two or three inches farther down than the level of his chin.

  "Start in talking," I told him flatly. "Who set that up back there?" I moved around them as I spoke so that what light there was came from behind me and fell full on them. I could see them plainly enough, but I doubted that anyone back at the wrecked Cad could see much, if anything, this far away.

  Neither of them said a word and I pulled the barrel of the .38 over and held it two feet from Baldy's head and pointed right at his nose. He said suddenly, "Just walking. Walking back to town."

  "You son of a bitch! Drop that thing. You always walk around with a sap?" He dropped it. I went on. "Both of you, stretch. Hands nine feet up. Stretch!"

  They put their hands high over their heads and stretched. I looked from one to the other. "Start talking, and do it fast or I'll ruin you, so help me. Who worked the job on the car? Why are you bastards after me?"

  They didn't say anything and for about ten seconds I waited for them, and every second I got hotter and sicker and the knots curled tighter inside my stomach. One or both of these guys were going to tell me what this was all about or wind up half dead, and remembering what Freddy had looked like under that blanket, I wasn't sure I'd stop at halfway measures.

  They didn't speak. I lowered my gun down to the level of my hips.

  "O.K.," I said. I took one step forward, slipped my finger outside the trigger guard, and slashed the gun up in a fast arc that began at my hips and ended against Baldy's chin with a shock that I felt in the tight muscles of my forearm. He let out one small gasp and started to sag, but I grabbed the front of his coat with my left hand and flipped the gun in my right hand over toward the other man. He was down off his toes, standing flat-footed, looking at me, but I said, "Up! Stretch, damnit," and he almost went clear off the ground. While he was still looking it me I let go of Baldy, and as he fell toward my feet I slashed the revolver down and across the top of his head. He crumpled up silently at my feet.

  The tall guy blurted, "For crisake, you might of killed him."

  "You think you'll talk to me now?" I let him hear the double click as I pulled the hammer all the way back. The metal was a little slippery and I had to press harder than usual on the checked surface of the hammer, but it clicked twice and he heard it, all right.

  "Hold it, wait a minute. I don't know nothing. He got me. Him. Abel. Nils Abel. Oh, Jesus."

  "Who's Nils Abel?"

  "Right there. You hit him." His voice was shaking.

  "Keep it going."

  He kept it going. He talked a blue streak with his voice cracking once in a while, but he didn't say anything I wanted to hear. He was Joe Fine, a local handy man: handy with a gun or sap—or anything requiring little intelligence, apparently. Nils, the guy on the ground, had picked him up earlier, saying that they might go out to the airport. Nils hadn't said why, but by now Fine did know that somebody—he didn't know who—had wired the dynamite in the Cad. I thought he was telling me all he knew. About the only other thing I found out was that Nils Abel was a box man at Victor Dante's Inferno.

  Then light splashed full upon us. Headlights. I risked a quick look, then swung back to Fine, wondering what the hell I did now. It could be Colleen, or somebody of the curious, or the law. At first the law seemed one hell of a good idea, but out of the back of my brain I remembered Freddy saying something about Dante's influence: "Political and police." I wasn't in my own back yard now and there was no Captain Samson on my side or anyone else I could be sure about. Right now there was just me.

  I didn't have time to stop and add up all the pros and cons, think it out logically, because while we stood there full in the glare of the headlights—Joe Fine with his hands over his head and me holding a gun on him, and Baldy crumpled on the ground—somebody back at the airport yelled loudly and a bright spotlight on one of the sheriff's cars swung over and outlined us even better than before.

  The first car slid to a stop alongside me. It was Colleen, and I made up my mind. I called to her, "Wait there," then swung the big guy around, eased the hammer of the .38 down, and reversed the gun, then smashed the butt against his skull. I was climbing into the Mercury before he hit the ground, and I looked out the rear window as a patrol car behind a screen of people backed away from the building.

  I looked at Colleen and her face was frightened. "Baby," I said, "you can either sit here and wait, or get me the hell out of here."

  She'd already had the gears in low and she let out the clutch with a snap t
hat threw my head back onto the cushions. Then she skidded around to the right and hit the road leading out to Highway 91.

  I said, "That's a police car back there. If you don't stop, you're in trouble."

  She didn't say anything. She bent over the wheel, staring straight ahead, and had the gears in high and the accelerator jammed to the floor boards, and I heard that sound which is like a power saw slowing when it cuts through too heavy timbers, as the siren behind us shivered high at its nerve-scraping peak and began whining down the scale.

  Chapter Seven

  COLLEEN raced to Highway 91, skidded to the right, and flew down the road, past the Flamingo and the Inferno and the Desert Inn, entering the traffic that was heavier now back on the main part of the Strip. We'd picked up a good head start on the sheriff's car, because the deputies had to wait for some of the people to get out of their way or else run over them, and then had paused momentarily by the two men who might have been dying for all they knew. But they'd come after us.

  I asked Colleen, "The cops know your car?"

  "No."

  "From back there at the airport, then? Think they'd remember it?"

  "I don't think so. There were other cars there. I doubt that they could have noticed the license number; all that was so fast."

  The Thunderbird was up ahead on the right. I said, "Slow down. Pull into the Thunderbird and park on the left. Douse the lights."

  She zoomed into the drive and parked as cars on the road began pulling over and stopping in obedience to the siren. All the clubs on the Strip have a lot of parking space, and there were probably two hundred cars or more around us. Even if the deputies had seen us turn in here, which was doubtful, it would be like looking for the proverbial needle. A few seconds after Colleen turned off the lights and killed the engine, the black car raced past on the road toward downtown Las Vegas.