Shoot The Moon (and more)

by Max Allan Collins

  Some babysitter.

  When I got out of the Lincoln I tried looking into the back seat to see who or what was behind the black panel, but the windows were shaded, like a hearse. Vin tugged me along and we went up the half flight of stairs. Behind us concrete-slab sat at the Lincoln's wheel, gunning it now and then. Sounded like a purring cat. Jungle cat.

  Inside the brownstone, beyond the vestibule, were more stairs, four flights of which we climbed, ignoring dozens of closed numberless prison-gray doors on each different floor. The building was unnaturally soundless. Like a massive tomb. The smell of paint was in the air.

  Finally, on the fourth floor around the corner and at the end of a narrow corridor, waited another of the unnumbered grey cells. Vin gripped the automatic firmly as he worked a key in the Yale lock. He eased the door open, whispered:

  "Vin, Hal."

  "Okay. He with you?"

  "Yeah."

  The room was dimly lit and sparsely furnished. It smelled musty, like a run-down funeral parlor. The color scheme of the room was in charming faded browns: two chairs, a bureau, a bed and a standing lamp wearing its shade crooked. There was a doorway to the left of the bed, either to a closet, I supposed, or to the john. Possibly the john, because there was no one in the room except Vin, his buddy Hal and me. And I didn't think Susan Stewart would be waiting in a closet.

  Hal said, "You Smith?"

  I said, "Me Jane."

  Vin frowned, said, "Cut it out, Smitt."

  "Sorry," I said to Hal, "just trying to brighten a dreary situation. Glad to meet you, Hal."

  I held out my hand to Hal and got a sneer in return.

  "Don't mind Hal, Smitty."

  But I did. I did mind Hal, Hal's attitude, Hal's B.O., and Hal's neanderthal appearance. This was an FBI man? He wore a tacky brown suit two sizes too small for his five foot wide frame and white socks glared up over his brown shoes. All of him but the white socks blended in nicely with the room's mud-brown decor.

  "Where's Miss Stewart?" I dropped a spent cigarette to the floor and ground it out.

  Hal jerked a thumb toward the door by the bed. From behind the door came the sound of a flushing toilet, and I deduced that it concealed the john and not a closet and watched as it opened and Susan (a.k.a., Suzie) Stewart came out.

  She wasn't bad. Not the Playmate of the Month, mind you, not top heavy enough for that. She reminded me so much of someone else it shook me. But she wasn't Karen. She was just a nervous young thing with hands moving around as if looking for someone to latch onto and full lips twitching and her lean long-legged body shifting uneasily as she walked over to me.

  "You...you're mister...mister Smith?"

  "Yeah. Smitty'll do. Glad to know you, Miss Stewart," and she took my hand and shook it. She had a nice soft hand, smooth, but no fishy grip either. Who needed Hal?

  "I'm going to have to lock the door, Smitty," Vin told me. "You won't have a key. In approximately an hour I'll be back and relieve you of Miss Stewart and that will be all."

  "I turn in my badge so soon?"

  "That's right, Smitt."

  "Okay by me. What if somebody tries to get in?"

  "Anyone who is supposed to get in will have a key."

  "What about...unwanted guests?"

  "Better use that box of shells I gave you and get that .32 of your loaded up."

  "Now, come on, Vin, come on!"

  "I'm leveling with you Smitt. Load it. And use it if you have to." Half-smiled. "Aim at the head, remember?"

  "Yeah, I remember."

  He motioned Hal out, patted me on the shoulder and give me his weird almost-smile and closed the door. I heard him working the lock on the other side. And that was it.

  "Trapped," she said.

  She smiled, gently. Pretty girl, shoulder length hair, darkish blonde, eyes big bright and brown, wisp of a nose, nice lips, teeth with a sexy little buck to them, clean clear complexion, pretty girl.

  "How did you...get into this, Smitty?"

  I shrugged, a habit I picked up from Vin. "I don't know, Miss Stewart. I don't know. But I sure am in it."

  "You seem...seem different, somehow...than what they said...said you'd be."

  "Thanks." As nervous as she was, I half thought they'd told her to expect the Boston Strangler.

  "I...I didn't mean anything bad...just...just that they said..."

  "What did they say?"

  "Nothing...nothing at all."

  "Tell me, kid. What have you got to lose?"

  "I'm sorry...sorry...maybe I shouldn't be talking to you...maybe we better...it'd be better not to talk...they'll be mad."

  Shrugged again. "I don't care, Miss Stewart. I'd rather talk to you, though. Might help me to piece some more of this together so I could understand it a little."

  Her mouth took on a slightly pouty look; eyes teary. "It's better...better not to understand. Care if I...sleep a while?"

  "Go ahead."

  She reclined on the bed. The short dress hiked up over long nyloned legs. Lovely legs.

  I looked away.

  I opened the box of shells and loaded the .32. It was coldly new, though ten years old. Unfired. I hadn't shot a gun since Korea, and then unwillingly. Damn. Started filling the cylinder of the little revolver with the bullets. Looked over at the girl, who had fallen asleep. Nice girl. Pretty. Looked a little bit like Karen. Quite a bit like Karen.

  Karen.

  Karen, that bitch.

  Married in some suburb with a bunch of brats hanging on her and her bastard Brad with his fifty thou a year. Fuck 'em.

  I got a Christmas card from them once, had their picture on it, Karen, the bastard, the brats and a Collie who looked like the bastard only more intelligent. The bastard. Lucky bastard.

  Damn Christmas cards anyway, Christmas cards to Vin Thompson helped get me in this hole in the first place. And damn Karen for being Karen.

  Susan Stewart, pretty like Karen, so much like Karen, or like Karen was. So pretty. But nervous, so nervous.

  And why not? Of course she's nervous, her father dead and her the only witness. Her father was an important senator, too, by God what was it he was involved in? Hearings on organized crime, wasn't it? A lot of people could have wanted him dead, and the kind of people who wouldn't mind making him that way.

  Not to mention some of the "straight" people involved with organized crime who sit at their fat corporate desks and tsk tsk the high crime rate. The kind of people who don't like to look at the truth themselves, let alone let others look at it. Maybe Senator Stewart was clearing some of the fog away and somebody didn't like that. A lot of people like fog.

  And I was one of those people sitting in the fog and wondering just what the hell was going on.

  The girl slept.

  I laid the .32 on my lap and leaned back in the hard chair and stared at the door and at the girl and back again, shifting from one to the other every minute or so, girl, door, girl, door...

  At four-fifteen my bladder beckoned and I headed for the can. It wasn't the cubby-hole I'd expected, but was large, with tub, sink, head and even a window. Beyond the window, a fire escape. Good thing to know. The window was locked already, to my relief.

  Back to the chair.

  Four-twenty.

  Outside the door, noise. Footsteps. Careful footsteps, but plainly footsteps, coming down the corridor. I eased over to the bed, placed my hand over Susan Stewart's mouth and jostled her awake. Her eyes golf-balled and sounds tried to come out of her, but I wouldn't let them.

  "Trouble, maybe," I whispered.

  She began to tremble.

  "Easy, Suzie, easy. Please. Stand over at the left of the door. Over in the corner. Quick!"

  She rose and padded quietly across the room and molded herself as well as she could into the corner. She was terrified. Almost as terrified as I was.

  Key in the lock, moving in the lock, working in the lock.

  Door exploded open.

  Hal.

 
; Hal stood in the doorway and fired an automatic and fired it and fired it, not aiming at anything, not bothering to look at anyone. He emptied the gun. Then he looked to see if he had hit anyone. Which he hadn't.

  "Nobody's that stupid, Hal," I said, "except maybe you."

  I lifted the .32 at him, quivering, my face as tight as a clenched fist, my vision a searing, brilliant red. Squeezed the trigger. The gun belched fire at him and I squeezed some more and it belched more fire at him.

  And Hal stood there and grinned at me.

  I couldn't be that bad a shot, good God no, not at six feet!

  Yet there Hal stood, grinning, stuffing another clip of bullets into his automatic.

  It was then that I realized that there wasn't anything wrong with my gun, and probably not even with my aim: only the bullets. The bullets I'd been given were blanks.

  I noticed too that Suzie was screaming, screaming a strange sort of a scream. Soft, sort of, and to herself. Almost distant.

  And Hal was bringing the automatic up toward me and saying, "Now get the hell over against that wall and wait."

  He's not going to kill us yet, I thought. He'd been aiming after all, aiming to miss us. Just trying to scare hell out of us, I guessed. Which he had. But, Sweet Christ, he was not going to kill us yet! There was time, time!

  Time, time if only I wasn't so God Almightily scared, my stomach such a queasy mass of jelly, but I had to keep my guts from flying apart somehow.

  "Hand over the .32, Smith," Hal told me. Softly, as to a child.

  I just looked at him.

  "I want that .32 , Smith."

  I managed, "Go fuck yourself, Hal."

  Hal showed me his teeth, two rows of hard yellow pencil erasers. He backhanded me. Blood crawled down my chin from a half-mashed upper lip. I fought the tears but some rolled out anyway.

  "Cry, you little chickenshit." Hal spat on the floor. "Now hand me the .32. I've got some slugs that'll work in it okay." He laughed down low in his throat. The laugh sounded like a foot stepping in mud. "You'll see how good that .32 works with live bullets."

  In neon letters the word formed in my tiny brain: frame.

  "The neighbors, Hal," I heard myself saying. "What about the neighbors?"

  Suzie, who'd stopped screaming sometime ago, said, "Do you seen any neighbors around to help us? He shot that gun off over and over again and do you see anybody?" Her voice sound flat, a mixture of shock and reconciled doom.

  Hal said, "This place was done over, not long ago. Remodeled. Used to be an apartment house, then sat for years vacant. But they made it back into an apartment house, ain't it swell? Only nobody moves in till next week."

  "This is a well-planned mess. You going to tell me about it or anything?"

  "What's to tell?"

  "Look, Hal, you're going to kill me in a while. Don't I have a right to know why? Humor Suzie and me, chum. Just a simple explanation."

  He shook his head. "I don't give a damn why you die or what you know. And I ain't going to stand around beating my gums so you can die happy. Not that you'd understand any of it, anyway. Got it? Now hand me the .32 like a good boy and go over to the wall and stand with your hands behind your head. You, too, honey. Now move!"

  We didn't move an inch.

  "Look, chickenshit, hand me that .32 or I'll make things tough on you."

  "You don't hear so good, Hal. I said go fuck yourself."

  "Hand it over!"

  I swallowed hard, grabbed in as much air as I could, and heaved the .32 at his head. It caught him, and he pitched backward, the automatic firing into the ceiling. Bits of plaster and wood rained on me as I leapt at him. I had an idea of getting the automatic away from him, but mainly just wanted to kill him any way I could. Tried for his groin, couldn't get there, went after the throat, both hands, got there, dug in deep, tore at it, saw my hands go white, my nails red. Hand, his hand, came up at me with a gun in it, I batted it away with my elbow, lost grip on his throat. Got a good knee in his groin, finally, he screamed, high, but slammed in my nose with the gun barrel, didn't break it but blood gushed out, kept gushing. Automatic's single eye stared me in the face, in the eye, left eye, death staring at me. Gun went off, as I jerked my head to one side, sparks in my eye, burning, as gun went off to left of me. Punched my fist into his face, broke a knuckle, sent in a knee to his kidneys that drew him into a screaming ball. I grabbed up toward his arm, he had gotten to his feet now, grabbed his wrist and twisted it around.

  The automatic went off and caught him square in the face.

  I looked up and saw his face. What had been his face.

  Watched as he dropped.

  Suzie had started in screaming, only not so distant this time.

  I went over to try and comfort her, but couldn't make it. Ran to the bathroom and puked. Puked till I puked blood.

  Then wept.

  I fell to the floor and buried my head in my hands and wept and coughed a racking cough and lay there in the puke and blood and tears and wished I'd let Hal kill me.

  A few minutes passed and I began to snap out of it.

  I struggled to my feet, bracing myself on the bowl of the head, and went over to the sink and washed up as well as I could. My upper lip throbbed and hurt and looked like yesterday's meat. I ached where I'd caught one in the kidneys and my nose was too sore to even think about. My knuckle was puffy-looking and numb, and my stomach felt weak from puking. And there was a taste in my mouth, an awful clinging terrible taste, a mouthful of pus and cotton.

  But all in all I wasn't so bad off for what I'd been through. When I went back into the room I found Suzie staring at Hal's body. She'd covered his face with a pillowcase.

  She said, "Somehow he doesn't seem...quite so very dead that way...you know?"

  I didn't say anything. There's only one kind of dead, and that's dead, but I didn't say anything. I just picked up my .32 and went over to Hal's body to get the live ammunition for it. It was in his left inside sportscoat pocket. The pillowcase slipped and I had to see some of what was left of his face while I searched out the box of slugs, but my stomach seemed to hold on pretty well. Not that there was anything much left for it to retch up.

  "Suzie," I said. Softly. Very.

  "Yes?"

  "You'll have to tell me about it. Everything."

  "I know. They're going to kill us, aren't they?"

  "Sooner or later."

  "What'll we do?'

  "Try and make it later."

  "How?"

  "Well, they'll be all over the neighborhood before long. Unless we stumble on a cruising cop first, we're had. I doubt we make it out of this section of the city alive, not at this hour, with them after us. The streets'll be deserted and we'll be like the proverbial..."

  "The proverbial sitting ducks," she said. And smiled.

  And smiled, for God's sake.

  So did I.

  "How about a public phone, there's surely one around here someplace, Smitty,"

  "No go, kid. Bars are long since closed, and as for a booth, we can't stand around in one spot that long. If we could find one. No, we'll have to find some place to hide till the streets get busy. Toward mid-morning, when the people are thick on the street, we can blend into the crowd and then maybe get away because it'd attract too much attention if they shot at us in broad daylight."

  "What will we do, Smitty, what can we do?"

  I latched onto her hand. I pulled her in close and looked her right in her pretty Karen face and said, "You are on my side, aren't you, kid? I killed a man tonight and if you're not on my side I'm liable to do other things."

  Her thin arms wrapped around me and she held herself close to me, warm to me, soft to me, saying, "I'm on your side, Smitty. On your side all the way."

  I put my hands on her waist and held her away from me. "Then come on. Let's get the hell out. In the john, out the window."

  "Huh?"

  "Fire escape, kid, follow me."

  "All the way, Smitty." />
  The scape got stuck toward the bottom and I had to jump half a story. Suzie eased down into my arms and I set her down and we stood and brushed ourselves off, looking all about us. No sign of anyone. I kept the .32 tight in my shaking hand, moving it in front of me back and forth in a steady swinging arc, a pendulum extending from my shoulder.

  "You...scared, Smitty?"

  "Shitless."

  She laughed. "So am I. Boy, so am I."

  I smiled at her. Going to get killed any minute and she's laughing. Well, what the hell, and why not? Hadn't I smiled back?

  I turned and looked down the alley. A block down, a solid block down uninterrupted by streets, two tight walls of building on each side, the alley stopped in a dead end. The dead end was the back of an old factory of some kind: faded lettering read "Christie Brothers Manufacturing Company." I could see steps presumably leading down to a back entrance.

  "Come on, Suzie," I whispered.

  And we ran, footsteps echoing.

  The door had an old-fashioned key-hole lock, and all it took was a good swift kick to pop it open and in we went.

  It was a dusty dump, but it was home.

  There were a couple dozen old wooden crates of various sizes scattered about the room. Which wasn't very big, as rooms go: long and narrow and naked, a boxcar of a room. The floor held a good inch of dust and the cobwebs hung from the low ceiling like old lace curtains.

  The first thing we did was barricade the door behind us with three of the sturdiest crates. Another door, opposite the one we'd just entered by and leading, most likely, into some part of the deserted old factory, we likewise barricaded with two heavy boxes. There were several windows, but they were smoked with age, so there was no sweat to that. I cleared a spot in one corner and dusted off two crates for us to sit on and piled all the others in front of us.

  I sat down on one of the crates and she sat next to me and we smoked two of the ten cigarettes I had left. The burning tips glowed in the room like lights on a boat lost in fog.

  "I like you, Smitty," she whispered. All the rest of the time we talked it was in whispers.

  "I like you too, Miss Stewart."

  "That...that isn't really my name."

  "The hell..."