I kept walking.
A couple of faces peered out the windows at me curiously. Trucks rumbled past, the drivers intent on getting through the rain.
A wino was sprawled in a doorway, sleeping, oblivious to the wet.
The sky laughed deep in its belly and spewed another mouthful on the city.
And I saw the number 1717 and knew I was there.
It was an old dilapidated building with the front windows boarded up. No lights showed in the upper stories and the front door was locked. I went through the front door of the ornamental ironworks place next to it and an obliging guy in a canvas apron let me out the back. There was a communal area there filled with trash, a path through it leading to the electric meters on the outside of the wall. The one on the 1717 was buzzing and when I checked the rotor inside by the light of a match it was turning slowly. The place wasn’t empty as it looked. Somebody was using power up there.
Above me I could barely see the vague outline of the rusted fire escape. It was within reach, but I knew the noise it would make if I tried to pull it down. Rather than try it I felt my way along the wall, found the framework of the back door and felt for the knob. It turned easily, but an interior bolt held it fast. The place was buttoned down tight, but it was to be expected. If Marcus had arranged for the place to be a hideout he wouldn’t take a single chance at all. Any means of entry was probably guarded with an alarm system and probably up there he had another escape exit ready if he had to use it.
One window shone dully in the light close by. Time was ticking off too fast, and I couldn’t go probing for other ways of getting in. I stood there trying to decide what to do and the sky was ripped apart by a brilliant streak of lightning. Then I knew what I was going to do.
When the thunder came with a shocking crack of sound I rammed my elbow through the pane and no fall of glass could be heard above the reverberation of nature at all. I picked the shards out of the frame, and when there was room to get through, felt for the wires of the signal system, located them and slid inside.
Leo Marcus should have updated his alarm setup. It was the old style dependent upon the raising of the window to activate it. I stood inside getting used to the deeper darkness, the .45 cocked in my hand. Little by little I felt my way across the room and into another, careful where I placed my feet so that a stray sound would carry upstairs.
One room opened into another filled with stored furniture I had to edge around. Once I had to hold a stack of chairs that nearly toppled, then I got them balanced again and circled to the door. I pulled it open slowly, tuning the squeaking of the hinges to the rumble of traffic from the street. Enough light came in the front windows to outline the hallway and the staircase that led to the floors above.
I stayed close to the wall where there would be less chance of hitting a creaking board, taking every other step, diminishing the chances of touching one wired to the alarm circuit. My hand felt for trip wires, found one and I stepped over it, grinning silently in the darkness. Other people knew the tricks too.
I looked into one room on the second floor where all the desks were, the windows painted black, then didn’t bother with that floor at all. I went up the next flight, ran into a duplication of the trip wires down below and got over them. Once a board creaked ominously and I paused, waiting to see if there would be a reaction.
None came and I knew why it didn’t.
From someplace on the next floor came the muffled sound of a woman’s screams and it covered any sound I made getting to the top. She screamed again and I located the sound behind a steel door studded with rivets, a barricade only a dynamite charge could break down.
My mouth muttered impotent curses and I didn’t give a damn any more. I struck a match, saw another door at the end and ran down to it. Behind the steel she screamed again and somebody laughed. I recognized Argenio’s voice.
This door wasn’t steel. The tongue of the lock on the inside ripped loose from the dry rotted wood when I threw enough pressure against it and I shoved it open, then closed it behind me. Another match reflected off a black painted window and guided me to it. I found the alarm switch at the top of the frame, threw it into the off position, unlocked the catch and pried the window up.
Under the window a four-inch ledge ran the length of the building. Not wide enough to walk, but enough to give me one vital step that would put my hands within catching distance of the fire escape that was outside the other room.
I hated to do it, but I needed the cover. I didn’t know what they were doing to her or what it cost her, but I needed another scream wrung from her mouth. I waited, poised, heard that muffled laugh, barely audible, then the piercing note of a scream that barely reached me.
I jumped.
For a second I thought I’d lost it, but my fingers hung on and I dragged myself up and over the rail and reached for the .45 before it could fall out of my waistband. I stood there outside the window and she screamed again. The sound barely penetrated. I struck a match, saw myself reflected in the black of the window, but through a scratch in the paint saw the planks that covered it from the inside.
The entry had to be quick. There had to be a diversion, enough to rattle them. Surprise was gone now, but a diversion would work. One of the steel slats that formed the floor-work of the fire escape landing was loose at one end and it only took a minute’s work to work it loose, one end breaking with a shallow hook on it like a crowbar.
From his seat in the coliseum, the old man with the scythe roared with pleasure at my tactic in trying to beat the game and applauded with a clap of thunder. I got the curved edge between the two windows, snapped the catch when he clapped again, then eased the window up.
The bell went off inside, a high-pitched, tinny sound that came from outside the room. Through the crack in the boards I saw part of a man run past, heard the stifled curse, then kicked the board in with my foot and ducked my head into the opening to stare at the hideously grinning face of Al Argenio.
For a fraction of a second time had ceased, but in that millisecond he read my eyes and saw everything come apart and knew that there was nothing left unknown at all. He had her tied to a chair with her clothes torn from her body and had been giving her a sample of the things he had always taken pleasure in and now enjoyed even more, trying to force confirmation from her just to be sure the game had been played out the old way, and ready to kill her when he was certain of it and start a new one behind Marcus.
But I hadn’t told her anything and she hadn’t been able to talk. Now I was telling him things. Silently. The Sentol, the FS-7, the silencer, the finger in the ink bottle… and now it was over. He read the whole message in my eyes and fired from the hip.
He didn’t even come close. The .45 punched a hole at the bridge of his nose and left a stream of matter from the floor to the wall and he was whipped onto his back by the force of the impact, dead before his body hit the boards.
It only took a couple of moments to kick a hole through the opening, wrenching the boards loose. Downstairs somebody was yelling for somebody else to call the cops and a beam of light flashed up to where I was going through the slats.
Only one fluorescent light hung from the ceiling casting a bluish pall over everything. The blood that oozed from Madaline’s mouth had a purple tinge and the welts across her breasts and shoulders from the leather strap he had used were a dark maroon. Her eyes were dull, glassy with pain and fatigue, then she recognized me and the light came on behind them.
To one side a door stood open where Marcus had disappeared, but I wasn’t chasing him now. He wasn’t going anywhere. Outside in the city the sirens had begun to sound the last chord and they’d know who to look for.
I dropped the gun in her lap and began working at the knots in the rope that held her. “Easy, honey. Relax.”
First one untangled, then another and her arms fell limply to her sides and I knelt down and started on the ones that bit into the flesh of her thighs and calves.
&nb
sp; She squirmed, went rigid. I looked up to tell her not to fight against the pressure, then I saw her face. Fear had drawn it tight and her mouth was half open in a soundless yell of warning.
Leo Marcus said from the doorway, “All right, Regan, just stand up and turn around.”
I swung my head and saw him, the gun in his good hand, the bandaged one held clutched to his stomach. His eyes were wild and alert, his mind racing. I let my hands drift over my head and stood up, taking a step to shield Madaline from his fire.
They’ll be here soon, I kept thinking. I could hear them coming. He could get me, but they’d get him. At least she’d stay alive.
Marcus could read my face too. “No good, Regan. There isn’t enough time.”
“There’s no place to go, Marcus.”
“I have a way out,” he said simply. “It’s been prepared ahead of time. I’ll be on my way while they’re still trying to figure this one out.”
“They know, Marcus.”
“Do they?” His eyes mocked me.
“They have that finger to prove it.”
He made a vague gesture with the gun. “Anybody can lose a finger. Don’t forget… they have mine, too.”
Damn him anyway! He was right. It wasn’t conclusive.
“I like this approach even better now.” He glanced at the body of Al Argenio, then back to me. “Now he’s out of the way. You two had a shoot out, that’s all. Incidentally, this is his gun. I think it will work very nicely. Everybody knows of the hatred between you two. The woman was the crux of the matter. She was caught in the middle when you shot each other.” He laughed softly. “A simple matter of putting a gun in his hand. Even my former… er, associates will buy the picture.”
“You’ve had it, Marcus,” I said, stalling.
He shook his head. “I should have done this a long time ago. It would have saved a lot of trouble to do it right there in my own living room.” He raised the gun and sighted along the barrel.
Her whisper was almost soundless. “Move, Regan.”
I took one step as the shot burned past me, tugging at my coat. Somehow the .45 slug from the rod she held squeezed in both fists tore the gun from his hands taking fingers and all, leaving a great, gouting stump dangling from his coat sleeve.
Leo Marcus looked down at the obscenity that had been a part of him a second ago, opened his mouth in what started to be a great bay of absolute horror and collapsed in the agony of frustration and pain.
The sirens were close now. They were stopping and voices were yelling instructions. I took the gun from her hand, put my arm around her and got her to her feet. Her coat was in the corner, and I draped it around her as they were coming up the stairs.
In the doorway Leo Marcus’ life ran out of him in a swampy pool of arterial blood and nobody was going to know anything except what I wanted them to know.
Madaline’s face was still ashen white, but the color was coming back into it. Outside I heard Jerry Nolan’s voice calling for axes to smash down the door. She said, “Is it over, Pat?”
I kissed her gently and shook my head. “No, kitten, it’s just beginning.”
Killer Mine Page 19