The Girl in the Cockpit

by Michael Avallone

  It was a pretty warm night but I was shaking inwardly as they hauled me into that shack, slammed me down into a chair, and crowded all around me. A looming, frightening horde of lithe young animals eager for the kill. There were five altogether, counting Johnny Ricco, and not a single one of them looked like any friend of mine. Forget it.

  I was the prisoner of a teenage gang. Five frenzied boys.

  None of whom looked as if they trusted anyone over thirty.

  Much less, liked them.

  Least of all, Johnny Ricco.

  The boy with the murdered father.

  And the knife.

  Two young punks held my arms behind me, bending them backwards in an uncomfortable, awkward position, around the wooden uprights of the chair. It was one of those old Salvation Army chairs, hard pine wood all polished to a faretheewell. Johnny Ricco stood straddle-legged before me, in yesterday's costume of bellbottom trousers and Army fatigue jacket. I couldn't see the faces of the strong-arm duo behind me but they were both as strong as weight-lifters, whoever they were. I couldn't have moved without one or both of them breaking my arms. So I relaxed, as much as I could. Two other young stalwarts were flanking Johnny Ricco. One had long, shaggy, unkempt hair and a beard that could double for Ulysses S. Grant. His partner was right out of the chorus line of Hair. Just as hairy and just as young, with that wide-eyed, dedicated look that is so distracting because it either means a high of some kind, or simply anti-Establishment on general principles. But whatever it was, neither Johnny nor his pals looked older than eighteen.

  The adolescent faces before me, oddly fanatical and purposeful because of the beards, the long hair and Ricco's insanely blazing eyes as he stared down at me, were a mixture of tough-guy and determined action. The Hair-model boy was holding my .45 up to his face and turning it over, admiring the feel and look of Mr. Colt's invention. There was only a moment to keep the party from starting—whatever kind of party it was going to be—so I jumped in as fast as I could.

  "Don't you think you're going about this backwards, Johnny?" I asked as easily as the tremor in my voice would let me. One bit of shrillness in me and they'd walk all over me. Besides, my hands and feet were still unbound and while they're loose, there's always half a chance. "Jumping private citizens is still breaking the law."

  My eyes were racing around the dingy, rickety interior of the shack-office, looking for a way out. I saw nothing but a roll-top desk, battered like a smashed accordion, a stuffed chair that had changed colors so many times because of the passing years that its hue was indescribable and a low, wide, heavy iron safe set back from the right of the desk. The safe was in the shadows but the hurricane lamp propped on the rotting planked floor of the room was throwing out an arc of illumination and glare which just caught the knob and combination lock that still glittered on the front of the old iron monster. It was the glow from the lamp which I had first seen from the heart of the junkyard outside.

  There was also a heavy beer keg standing some distance from my chair but it was too far away to do my feet any good at all.

  Johnny didn't answer me, not right away. He just couldn't take his eyes off me. Enough light from the lamp shone upward, catching the handsome, darkly Latin cast of his face. But it was his eyes that were magnetic now; shining like two lambent, burning coals in the gloom. I got the picture in a flash: with the prize in captivity, there was no reason to hurry now. He was putting on a show for his friends.

  "Shut up! Look who's talking. You're the lousy trespasser, Noon. This is my property. I'm in my rights if I shot you dead."

  "Don't do that, Johnny. I'm the guy who's going to help you find who killed your father. He was still my friend."

  "Sure you can." Johnny Ricco's sneer nearly lit up the shack's interior. "You've helped me find him already—me and the Hawks. We don't have to look any further. Do we, guys?"

  The kids behind my chair, holding me, gave my arms an extra turn and the agony lancing up my shoulder blades made me put my teeth together. The kid with the General Grant beard laughed and his Hair look-alike spun my .45 as if he was the fastest gun on Tenth Avenue. He was, too. The spin and expert gun-handling was right out of a wide-screen Western movie.

  "Come on, Little John," the bearded kid urged. "We're waiting on you. He's my first private eye. I want to see how big and tough he is."

  "That's right, man," chortled the boy on the other side of Johnny. "Let's see him do the Bogart bit. Cool nerves, a steady hand . . . and maybe he just might think of a way to outfox all of us. Only, maybe."

  My arm-holders were laughing now too, adding their own two bits' worth of private estimates of the situation. But Johnny waved them all down, barking out something savage. "Cool it," he ordered. "This is my show and we do it my way. And I'm going to slice him first——"

  The weird language, so unbecoming and, oddly, seeming rehearsed—like they were all kid actors in some kind of Off-Broadway play—sounded laughable and unreal. I couldn't help it. I laughed. And I kept right on laughing. And all that did was to tighten the situation, make the five boys in that shack close in on me—as if I needed medical attention. As tense as I was, the mirth coming out of me was a good-old-fashioned guffaw.

  "Stop it," Johnny Ricco hissed, balling his hands into fists and glaring down at me, his back to the lamp. "You think this is funny, I'll knock your teeth down your throat before I do anything else——"

  "Sorry, Johnny." I shook my head. "But you all sound like a bunch of play-actors. In the kind of play I never liked.

  "What is it tonight? You all on grass, or speed, or maybe you took the Big Trip this time? Ye Olde LSD, and all cares and troubles away? Come on. Knock it off. All of you. If you wanted to go to Canada to duck the draft or just don't give a damn for modem times, you'd get no complaint from me. But please start thinking straight, will you? Forget I'm over thirty. I'm all of that, but I'm not crazy either. Do you think I'd come nosing around here after dark, especially when you gave me your solemn promise yesterday that you'd kill me the first chance you got? And if I did show up here, knowing that and not caring, do you think I'd come alone? Look out the window, gang, and see if you don't spot a couple of Headquarters cops hanging around. And, for what it's worth, Johnny, I'll say it once more: I didn't waste your old man. Because that would have been a waste. And it was a waste. I don't shoot old men in the back. Not even on my worst days."

  It was a silly speech, a lot of fast patter and quick spieling but it had the effect of delaying and upsetting the plans of Johnny Ricco.

  He continued to glare down at me and one of his boys jumped to the window of the shack, making a fast reconnaissance and survey. When he sang out in a jubilant voice, "There's nobody out there, Little John! He's a bluff——" that was all the urging John Junkyard's son needed. He stepped away from me, and Grant and Hair fanned out to give him elbow room. I tensed in the chair and the pressure on my arms tightened as both my guards clamped down harder on me. The gloom of the interior dissipated as the hurricane lamp came into full focus. Johnny Ricco's tall, athletic figure had been between the lamp and me.

  The knife that suddenly came out in his extended right hand had all the attention-getting fascination of a cobra materializing. All at once.

  He pointed the knife at me. With a metallic click seven inches of shining steel sprang outward, catching the reflected glitter from the hurricane lamp. It was a switch-blade.

  The other Hawks to a man, all four of them, let out a deep murmur of satisfaction and feverish elation. If they weren't high on drugs, they were very high on Johnny Ricco and the situation he had posed. And all the logic in the world wasn't going to stop Johnny from carving me.

  "Say your 'Hail Marys,' Noon." The suggestion undulated and moved with him as he hovered above my chair. The glitter of the knife blade was the apple of all eyes. Including the private one—me. My 20-20's popped.

  "Conroy put you up to this, didn't he?" I shot up at him, writhing in the grip of the two Hawks who had me p
inned. "How much is he paying you or are you just going to split everything down the middle?"

  The shining blade came down, resting its pointed tip against my right cheek. It was a razor-sharp needle of a point. My insides tightened. I recoiled one thousandth of an inch. Anything more would have been a disaster. The Hawks holding me increased the pressure of their hands to keep me from turning away from the blade. But they had me all wrong. I would not have moved for a naked Raquel Welch just then. Johnny Ricco's tall and angry shadow fell across me, right behind the knife. Kid Vendetta, Himself.

  "Conroy don't mean nothing to me," he choked, as if the words were hot in his mouth. "I got teed off at Papa for ever knowing such a cheap hood. Terry didn't care—even put in a good word for that bum. But that's Terry—always wanting to be the girl in the cockpit. Always trying to ride anyone she thinks is a winner. Well, I'm not her. I'm Johnny Ricco, see? Little John of the Hawks. And you—Mr. Noon—I'm gonna cut you to pieces. I wanta see you crawl and howl. For shooting my old man in the back——"

  A whimper, or was it a sob, blossomed out of his chest and throat. He brushed angrily at his eyes, in the half-light, and for a full second I knew where I was—about a ticking second away from the sort of facial I had never wanted. Somebody's signature job. Initials.

  "Come on, Johnny," the kid who reminded me of Ulysses S. Grant suddenly blurted with impatient nervousness, "if you're gonna do it, do it! Crap or get off the pot——"

  From the circle of leather, suede, and corduroy-jacketed Hawks, ringed about me like a Death Watch, came a unanimous vote of approval.

  "Go, Little John, Go!"

  "'Bye, Eye Baby, 'Bye!"

  The interior of the tarpaper shack rang with the blood-cry of a bunch of very angry young men. Johnny Ricco and his Hawks.

  The generation between us wasn't a gap—it was the Grand Canyon.

  And was filled with hate, misunderstanding and vengeeance.

  Either one of which would leave me very dead.

  EYE

  The sudden violent reaction of Johnny Ricco and blurted demand of the Hawk who looked like the dead Civil War general and president, was all the split-second chance I was ever going to get. I took it, slim as it was. The tip of the switch-blade was away from my face for an insignificant instant, but I took that instant and gave it all the importance there is in any life-or-death league.

  I rode the chair I was sitting in backwards, throwing all my weight against the unprepared Hawks holding me down. They should have tied me up but they hadn't and now it was going to cost them. But they'd wanted to show their muscle and banked too heavily on me being too tongue-tied with fright to coordinate properly. Or even to think.

  We crashed backwards, wooden chair toppling, a trio of threshing figures. Johnny shouted something and lunged at me, knife flashing. But I was already up from the floor, free and able to do something constructive for a change. I did that too, blood singing.

  Surprise and fast reflexes are the best edges at times like this. I made good use of all. Besides, they were new at this sort of game for all their spirited youth. And I, an old China hand at rough-and-tumble, had mixed with giants in my time. Age and experience do have their merits, no matter what Johnny and the Hawks thought. Fight was dangerous but less of a contest than it might have been. They were torn between wanting-to-kill and would-they-kill? I wasn't stuck on that decision. I knew what there was to do:

  Get out of that tarpaper palace alive. And unmarked.

  I shot two kicks backwards, finding a target each time. The Hawks behind me, trying to rise, went down like the rice is reaped, as each of my size nines thudded into them somewhere at gut level. It took only a flying second and then I was ready for the charging Johnny Ricco.

  I caught his darting knife hand zooming straight for my chest, and gave the wrist that held the weapon a quick half-turn. Johnny screamed out in agony, stumbling on by me as I side-stepped. My tight right fist slamming into the side of his head sent him flying to the floor on his hands and knees in a contorted sprawl.

  The room was now a blur of action and movement and the hurricane lamp's yellow glare flung crazy shadows all about the shack's interior. The Grant Hawk and the Hair Hawk were jockeying for position, coming around to where Johnny had stood, and the boy with the .45 was making up his mind whether to use it or not. I swung up the third-degree chair and shot it along the floor toward the standing hurricane lamp, and jumped with the move to land on the Hair Hawk before he fired my gun just as the rocketing chair connected with the hurricane lamp. It was a bull's-eye shot. A shower of sparks flared outward, glass flew around the room and John Junkyard's old office plunged into darkness. Inky, onyx, blackness. As if the world itself had gone out.

  And I was in charge of the whole play because I'd been down that track before. So many times.

  I plucked the .45 from Hair's unseen hand, shoved by him and bulled my way to where I remembered the door was, kicking and crashing on through, as the Hawks filled the black interior with discordant howls, yells, and shouts of insane disorder.

  Hitting the outdoor air, full-tilt into the moon-washed junkyard, I was emerging from a long, dark tunnel. The night air whipped at my tie; it woke me up. I kept running, heedless of the heaps of junkyard obstacles set in my path. When I hit the thicket of weeds and enormous stacked salvage looming eerily in the moonlight, I pulled up short and vaulted into this handy concealment like a bear charging away from a hunter with a very long gun. Brambles and burrs tore at my clothes and the smell of waste and age was worse than ever but I didn't give a damn. I was out that shack and custody of the Hawks and I'd earned it the hard way.

  Crouched on my knees, breathing hard, with my .45 trained on the shack door no more than a hundred feet away, the utter silence of the ghostly junkyard was more ironic than ever. And there certainly were no Headquarters men lurking about. I guessed the thirty-foot-high stockade entrance had been over their heads. That, or they were simply having a quiet stake-out in the Plymouth, waiting for me to come out. Some cops do no more than they have to, regrettably.

  The wait for the disorganized Hawks was a very short one.

  They came rolling out of that tarpaper shanty like apples scattered from a crate that fell off the back of a truck and split wide open. Headlong, legs pumping, long hair flying, faces all corkscrewed with fear, bewilderment and disappointment—another unbeatable combination.

  Johnny Ricco was up front, where he probably always had been with the Hawks. Leading the pack and showing the way. The genuine "leader."

  I waited until the running pack was only fifty feet from me and then stepped out from the weeds, right in their path, and pointed the .45 full into their startled faces. I'd come up like a ghost and the effect must have been shocking. They came to a dead stop—with varying degrees of reaction. Mainly disgust with themselves for letting me get away and also for thinking I would run and keep on running without hanging around for a comeback at all.

  "Greetings, gentlemen," I said, "and I wish they were from your Uncle Sam. That way I could ship you all off to Vietnam tomorrow . . . such violent types as you are ought to be in a lousy war."

  Johnny and the Hawks growled and glowered at that. They started to fan out, all five of them, as if they had some idea of coming at me from all sides. I wagged the .45 and they all stopped moving and raised their hands. The kids I had roughed up, including Little John, were definitely unhappy with me. But no one was sadder or angrier than Johnny Ricco. He'd blown the whole deal and he knew it. His face was savagely dark.

  "Cool it, all of you," I suggested. "You're all up-tight about the wrong thing. And the wrong man. When that happens, you're bound to make mistakes. Don't worry. I'm not going to turn you in. I haven't the time, much less the inclination. But we are going to talk a little first. And I wasn't bluffing about those Headquarters cops. There are at least two of them outside, behind that fence, staked out in a Plymouth. Take my word for it. I'm too old to bluff anymore."

  A
ll the young faces were suspicious in the moonlight. And wary.

  Johnny ripped out a sarcastic laugh that sounded ghoulish in these surroundings. Like a ghost dancing over a garbage dump.

  "Okay. Let's say I believed you for even a minute, Noon. What would we have to talk about? You're out of step, man."

  "I want to square it for your old man. I want you not to tell anybody about finding that half-coin near the safe. You do that, and maybe all of us, yeah, me, you and the Hawks here can accomplish what the law can't so far. Is it a deal?"

  "Don't do it, Johnny," the Grant Hawk piped up, an edge of contempt in his tone. "He's still one of them, no matter how you look at it. How you going to take his word for anything?"

  "Shut up, Winchester," Johnny Ricco barked, staring at me for a longer second than usual. "And that goes for all the rest of you, too. This is still my show. Anybody got a different say, say it now!"

  Nobody did. But there was a surly, sullen murmur of general disapproval. Young Hair particularly spat on the ground between us, his dead smile showing me just how he felt about the whole arrangement.

  Johnny Ricco lowered his hands and thrust them into the side pockets of the Army jacket. A show of bravado but I let him make it.

  "Shoot, Noon. What's on your mind?"

  The ragged bunch of misdirected kids with him followed his lead. I let them do that too, but I didn't put the .45 away. That would have been silly. I was only still on top of the situation because I had the gun and they didn't. The two boys I'd kicked behind the chair, both lean and angular, with the same Biblical hairdos as the others, were killing me with murderous looks. Winchester seemed to be the second-in-command. With young Hair ranking third in the Hawks' pecking order.

  I made an attempt at diplomacy and public relations. It was time.

  "How about introducing everybody all around, Little John? I like to know the names of the people I'm going to be working with."

  Johnny Ricco shrugged, almost indifferently.