by Wade Miller
"I won't!" Jinny quavered. "I want to know if Biggo's all right."
Biggo said, "I'm all right, honey. You do as I told you. Get out of here before you're hurt some more."
"I won't!" she cried. "I'm not going till you come with me. He's got the paper, hasn't he? What more does he want?"
Biggo smiled stiffly. It got no answering smile from Hardesty. The younger man's nerves were coiling tight; they showed in his suddenly taut mouth. He didn't like having Biggo on one side and the invisible girl raising a fuss on the other. "Look, Jinny!" he snapped. "Get away from that door. Get going!"
"Not till Biggo comes with me. Why are you keeping him in there?"
"Get away!" Hardesty said.
"You don't tell me what to do!" The door bumped as she kicked it. "You want me to count to ten? Till you let Biggo come out there I'm going to scream and yell and you'll see what-"
Hardesty swore edgily. Her voice began to rise and he snapped his gun over and fired through the door. There was a black hole in the panel and a silence. The gun was on Biggo again.
Then Jinny laughed. It was a peculiar easy laugh as if she had been engrossed with fear and now it was put aside.
She said, "That's twice as good as a scream, Lew-" Hardesty snapped around and laid three more holes across the door. And Biggo spun and dove headlong for the partly-open window. His shoulders tore off the lower edge of the sash and he took the screen down with him. Hardesty's fire ripped over his head, inches late. He hit on his left shoulder in the flower beds below, somersaulted like a paratrooper in the springy earth and rolled into darkness.
He got up and ran. At first he ran blind, just getting out of range of the window. Hardesty would have to follow through the window rather than chance getting stopped in the hotel. Biggo hoped that Jinny had sense enough to stay with the crowd the shots would bring, not wander out alone where she might block Hardesty's path again.
Then, with the thought of the danger she had taunted, his mind began to cool into solid formed purpose. "Got to get a gun," he muttered. But that was impossible.
A weapon, then.
He dodged into a doorway, heard the voices coming past him, footsteps hurrying. When they had gone by, he ran down the hallway, up some steps toward the north end of the hotel. He had remembered the peacock.
He found the draperies that covered the iron gate to the empty gambling casino. He burst into the gloom of the bar.
The peacock tapestry with its threads of gold still hung from the wrought-iron spear. He grabbed it with both hands and jerked it down. He caught the spear and tilted it so that the iron rings sewn to the tapestry clanked off on the floor. The spear was heavy and nearly as tall as he was. The ornamental spear head rattled loosely on the square rod. There was a bolt that he tightened with his fingers so that the spear head was secure. Then it was a weapon.
He trotted to the rear of the bar and kicked a window open into the night. And from the parking lot sounded a high shivering cockcrow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Sunday, September 17, 10:00 p.m.
After the cockcrow rose an eerie scream, Spanish words Biggo couldn't quite make out but it held the thrill of some old bandit yell. "Good boy, Adolfo," growled Biggo and leaped into the bushes under the window.
A shot racketed, also from the direction of the parking lot. Biggo charged along the back of the hotel at a dead run, the spear in lance position helping feel his way.
No more shots. He crossed the edge of the parking lot toward the pine grove. "Don Biggo!" Adolfo called weakly. "Don Biggo!"
He was staring, his face a muddy color, at the slim bole of a pine where a bullet had cut whiteness through the bark.
"Where is he?" Biggo panted.
The Mexican was vibrating with fright. But he had done his job. Hardesty's car still sat in its place, empty. Adolfo pointed south. "There! Around the hotel-toward the water!"
"Stay with it," Biggo said and slapped Adolfo's shoulder and ran again. Biggo laughed aloud. He had the trail. Hardesty was badly rattled. He had let a scared yell keep him away from the car, the one escape; the bullet mark on the tree was too high for good shooting. "Afraid of me," Biggo chortled as he rounded the south bulge of the hotel. "He's afraid of me!" And there was a fleeting violent satisfaction that the younger man's inexperience had betrayed him.
His feet slapped onto the concrete promenade along the ocean front. At the far end he saw the figure of darkness, limbs spread in running. Hardesty-trying to make Ensenada. Biggo raced after him. The figure turned and there was a wink of light and then the sound of the shot. "Keep at it," Biggo muttered. "Come on." He hadn't even felt the wind of the bullet. The range was too great for Hardesty's weapon and Hardesty was on the run.
It was a hunt, a pursuit, a charge. Biggo's left shoulder ached from his dive through the window despite his professional landing. The night air burnt like acid deep in his lungs and he had to claw down after every breath to feed his ravening body. But he had inevitable purpose to goad him and Dan'l thought he had guts and Jinny didn't think he was getting old. "Dan'l," he said. "Jinny." They put animal strength in him and the distance between him and the quarry began to close. Because Hardesty was carrying a load of fear.
Hardesty sprang over the wall into the dunes, stopped to fire again. "Use 'em up," Biggo grunted. He had a vague notion of making Hardesty waste all his ammunition. He didn't think Hardesty had enough rounds to stop him, the pace he was going. But he had no idea of how many shots had been fired. He shouted and Hardesty obligingly wasted still another bullet.
They were both in the dunes now. At first there was only the sound of their feet on the soft sand, punctuated by the pistol fire. Then Biggo heard something else, the liquid chug-chug of an engine. His face split in a hideous grin. Red and possibly others were returning from the Ybarra yacht. They were behind Hardesty. Hardesty would either run into a pocket or he would have to stand and fight it out. Biggo thanked Red's timing; the spear was getting heavy.
Hardesty saw his position. He stopped at the top of the next gray dune and spun about. Biggo slowed down. He faced Hardesty from one crest to another, across the gentle chasm between the two sand mounds. They looked at each other silently. They had returned to the desert.
Finally Biggo said, "Got you, Lew."
"The hell you have." Hardesty had to suck for breath. "Come and get me. If you're man enough. I'll finish what I started in the casino." He tossed the automatic away. It was empty.
"I'm coming," Biggo said. He started. He still lugged the drapery spear. But when he shifted it to advance he saw that the point had fallen off somewhere during the chase. All he held was a long iron rod, blunt-ended, not a spear at all.
But it was part of his right arm now so he kept hold of it as he slid down the side of the dune. Hardesty waited for him on the crest of the next ridge, feet braced apart, in the position of advantage against the sky. He waited for Biggo to come within reach.
Biggo struggled upwards in the slipping sand. He watched Hardesty's feet for the kick that would launch the hand-to-hand struggle. He was nearly up to him. Hardesty's feet moved-but not to kick. Biggo's eyes jerked up and he saw too late what he should never have forgotten; the second Mauser. Hardesty had tricked him. The younger man had tempted his blood-lust and had lured him into point-blank range.
Even in the gloom he glimpsed the flash of Hardesty's grin. His hand came from inside his coat with the automatic. The hand shook slightly but Hardesty raised his other arm to level the barrel over it and he had all the target in the world.
Timelessness at the point of death. Biggo didn't know that he moved or thought. He did something he had never done before. He prayed. Not to the twentieth century God of the churches and Sunday schools. He prayed to the war god of the Old Testament, to Yahweh, the storm god of Sinai. And he prayed as Moses and Joshua and Gideon prayed. Not for mercy and forgiveness but for strength to invoke the ancient law against the evildoer. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, breac
h for breach.
The words thundered in his ears or it might have been the blood pounding. But he heard them plain and strong:
… wherefore Abner with the hinder end of the spear smote him in the body, so that the spear came out behind…
All was a part of the same instant, the aiming pistol, the cruel white grin of Hardesty and Biggo Venn lunging. He lunged uphill with a blunt useless rod on uncertain footing-and he struck with all his strength and more. He struck Hardesty as Saul's aging captain had once struck Asahel, his tormentor, in the long-ago mists of history.
And that was all. Lew Hardesty was no longer a dangerous man in the prime of his manhood. He was only a writhing shape on the gray sand. The sand slowly darkened, blotting up the blood as it crept past the iron rod which had skewered him.
Biggo knelt by him and raised Hardesty's head. All his hatred had passed into the spear thrust and now it was gone forever. He would not have changed the outcome if he could but the act was done and over. Hardesty, beaten, was another reflection of Biggo. Once they had fought together.
He said softly, "Sorry, Lew."
Hardesty's eyes, glazed with dying, cleared for a moment. He didn't know right from wrong but he understood this. His grin was still contorted on his face and his lips formed words. Biggo bent closer although he knew what they would be. "Ezzy yellallah," said Hardesty. He said no more.
He put Hardesty's car keys in his pocket and he took the Bible from Hardesty's coat. He picked up the pearl-handled Mauser from where it had fallen. Out by the jetty Biggo could see the motorboat rocking there gently. He got to his feet and crunched down the dunes to it.
Pabla and Red were the only ones in the boat, watching him as he approached. It came to Biggo that they had watched through the whole fight without interfering. It hadn't mattered to them who won. They were waiting to deal, one way or another, with the victor.
Biggo growled to Red, "You're a big strong man. Go up there and get him. He's the Magolnick agent-outsider, not what you were looking for. Let your boss figure out how to get rid of him without trouble to any of us."
Red looked at Pabla. She nodded. He climbed out of the boat and went to get Hardesty's body.
She said, "Do you have the paper, Tom's paper?"
"Yeah." He showed her the Mauser. "Also this. Let's see the money."
"Biggo, I feel how harshly you are thinking of me. Perhaps you are justified in a way. But on the yacht when you struck me-struck me through love, not hate-I understood. I could feel your-"
"The money," he said. "Give me Dan'l's money."
"Dan'l's money?" She was puzzled.
"Oh, forget it," he said wearily. He split the Bible's binding open the rest of the way and pulled the deathbed confession of George G. Noon from its hiding place. He flipped it at her, not much caring whether it fell in the water or not.
She caught it. She pressed on a flashlight to inspect it. The beam played over her legs. Her skirt was hoisted above her knees. Her legs still looked good but Biggo wondered why he had ever expected them-or her-to be anything special.
Red came back, carrying Hardesty's body. It was a difficult task because Lew had been a big man and then there was the iron rod like a spit. But he got the dead man into the boat. Pabla barely gave him a glance. Biggo made sure that Red saw he was armed.
She passed him up a long full envelope. Biggo opened it and riffled through the hundred dollar bills. It looked like enough to be twenty thousand dollars but he didn't bother to count it. He just wanted to get away from all of them and what they reminded him of.
Pabla said softly, so Red couldn't hear, "Now you have the money you earned, Biggo."
"That's right, isn't it? Paid in full."
"Perhaps, in money. I must sail south with Tom, of course. After that, when Tom leaves… You'll be traveling with your money, seeking beauty. But it is nothing alone."
"No," said Biggo. "It's nothing alone." He wasn't thinking of Pabla but she didn't know that and would never be made to believe it. She was so certain.
She whispered, "I'll wait to hear from you." Then Red had started the motorboat and she was gone into the dark, blonde hair blowing but with her regal assurance whole and perfect. Biggo stood and stared at where she had disappeared. Nothing he said could ever crack that barrier of vanity. Only time could do that, when she finally realized that he wanted no part of her.
He laughed. He stuffed the Bible in one coat pocket, the Mauser in the other. He put the envelope of money in the pocket inside his coat. He began to run again, tired as he was. Jinny would be waiting to hear, worried about him, praying.
* * *
As he entered the lobby of the hotel, he almost collided with the desk clerk. The Mexican pounced on him. "Senor Biggo, por Dios, you've returned! A moment more and it might well have been too late-"
Biggo grabbed his coat. "What do you mean? What're you talking about?"
"The tragedy. A prowler in your room during your absence. Your wife has been shot-"
Biggo cast him aside and sprinted across the lobby, up the stairs. A knot of guests and employees crowded around the open door of their room. He shoved through them. Jinny was lying on her bed, lips pale and suffering.
"Jinny!" he cried and thrust aside the maid who hovered over her. He crouched beside her, groping for her wrist. "Jinny, honey…" But the pulse beat was strong and regular. She opened her eyes slightly and then winked so that the others couldn't see. Biggo said, "What…" and she frowned. She whispered and he put his head close to hers.
She said, "Play up till the doctor comes. This is my big scene. I always thought I had talent. I thought if I keep them busy here while you… but what'll we say when the cops arrive?"
A grin spread over his face. He touched her cheek with his. "Good girl." He was on top of the world again. Then he saw the right side of her dress, wet and stained. Blood, her blood, against the green wool. He said, "You're not acting, honey. How bad is it?"
"Not so bad. I just got one of your kind of souvenirs, Biggo. That's all."
He shook his head at her, wonderingly. Scared to death, she had still refused to leave him alone with Hardesty. She'd wanted Biggo safe. She'd taunted Hardesty into firing and then, wounded, had laughed and pretended he had missed. She had maddened Hardesty. Just to give Biggo his chance.
To cover his emotions, he swung around and roared at the staring faces. "Well, where the hell's that doctor? My wife is hurt."
There was confusion.
Biggo's eyes gleamed at the crowded doorway. "My wife can't wait all night. These injuries might be serious." Trying to be gentle, he lifted Jinny up off the bed.
"Biggo," she hissed, "it's only a scratch on my arm. No need to-"
"Shut up," he muttered. She did. The crowd let him through. He strode down the corridor with her across his arms.
She cuddled. "This is a hell of a way to duck a hotel bill. What about our clothes? Every other stitch I own is-"
He said, "Shut up or you'll really need a doctor." He glared back at the people trailing and they stopped at the back entrance of the Riviera Pacifico, not following into the parking lot. He put Jinny in Hardesty's car.
Adolfo appeared out of the darkness. "Is it done?"
Biggo shook his hand gravely. "It's done, amigo. It could not have been done without a friend of your courage."
"You're leaving Ensenada, Don Biggo?" Adolfo sounded sad about it.
Biggo glanced at the people watching, out of earshot. "Leaving quickly," he said. "My best to the fortunate Rosita. And this." He fingered some bills out of the envelope inside his coat and slipped them into Adolfo's hand. "There are also certain belongings in my room which might be sold to your profit."
Formally, Adolfo bowed. "The departure of Don Biggo empties this heart. But I'll see that the police are misled. Vaya con Dios!"
Biggo got in beside Jinny and fitted the key in the ignition. The last thing he saw as they quitted the Riviera Pacifico was Adolfo's face, mournful but gr
inning too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Sunday, September 17, 12:00 midnight
They reached Tijuana by midnight, a midnight there that glared with neon and the headlights of cars packed bumper to bumper, oozing through the border gates into the United States. They joined a line and then just sat, grinding ahead a little at a time while the immigration men asked cursory questions of cars ahead.
They hadn't said much, speeding up from Ensenada. Biggo had told Jinny the barest details of the finish and the rest had been the darkness roaring against the windshield as they raced along the desolate highway. They didn't even sit close together because of Jinny's arm. All Biggo could think was that the job was done, another week ended during which men had died, and this was aftermath, hangover.
So they sat in Tijuana, waiting to be passed through out of Mexico.
Jinny said suddenly, "I guess you don't need to have any more worries."
"I don't get you."
"I mean about getting old and losing your grip. Not after today. Not after tonight."
He grunted. "I guess. Still plenty of fight left."
"I imagine you'll be going to China now-really, not just talking. With that much money, you can pick your side. Be a general, even."
Biggo rested his head against the back of the seat. "Easy. I can even pick my war." He couldn't get worked up about it. After a while, as they crawled forward a few more feet, he said, "Uh, you going back to Scribner now?"
"I don't think so. Oh, I know I won't. It's too far past. I'll do something."
He said, "You know this money is part yours."
"Oh, don't be silly!" she snapped at him. Then they argued, stubbornly and pointlessly, about whether Jinny would or wouldn't share the money. The car behind them honked and the line had moved ahead without Biggo noticing. He closed the gap. An open convertible pulled alongside of them in the other line, the couple occupying less than half of its front seat. The radio was playing Mexican music, too loud for Biggo and Jinny to argue without shouting.