The Girl in the Cockpit

by Michael Avallone

  "All right," I said. "You got in. Let her go—she won't scream or anything. Will you, Melissa?"

  Carlo Fargo didn't wait for her answer. Suddenly, he had loosened his hold and shot her away from him with a swift gesture. Melissa sailed toward the couch, caught herself and slumped, half-up, half-down on the floor. She raised herself, shaking her head, breathing hard. She flung a glare of contempt at the big man now standing off from us both, pointing the .32 and shaking his head as if he was very sorry for the both of us. I hung onto my steadily seething anger and kept my upraised hands from clenching. Carlo Fargo looped out a stanchionlike leg and hooked the chair toward himself, the one that showed my harness equipment with .45 to match. Fargo swept the gun out of its holster like the seasoned pro he was. Now, he had two guns. A .32 and a .45 which put me and Melissa about seventy-seven points behind him. Far behind.

  "I'm sorry, Ed—" Melissa murmured softly. "The big ape was on this floor. He got me out in the hall. I couldn't do a——"

  "Who you calling ape?" Fargo snarled, his face tightening with anger. "Why you damn coon . . . boy, I'm gonna enjoy giving you two the treatment. A bonus, like. You know what I mean?"

  "No names, Fargo, please," I said, hot rage filling me. "What do you want? Thought your boss and I had sort of said goodbye to each other."

  Fargo grunted, his tiny eyes glittering, both guns still trained. He was like a tall enormous tree growing in the center of my living-room floor. He had never been a pretty man but now he looked uglier than anyone born of woman. He was a monster encased in a white trenchcoat. I remembered what Monks had told me about the pizza restaurant and Fargo cleaning up ten guys in a crooked crap game. I could believe it.

  "You were given a message," Carlo Fargo rumbled. "You don't hear no good. You walked right outa Frankie's office and went where you had no business going. Frankie don't like that. What he don't like, I gotta do something about. You need an explanation, Noon?"

  "Only an answer. How did Frankie know I went to see Terry Ricco? I only left her place about an hour ago. She got a hot line to him?"

  "You get no answers. Only your lumps. I knew the first time I laid eyes on you tonight you were a loser. You do all the wrong things. You oughta listen to Frankie when he tells you things."

  I watched Melissa out an eye-corner. She was sitting on the edge of the sofa, trying not to shudder but she couldn't take her eyes off the enormous giant in front of her. An armed King Kong who certainly sounded like the spoonful of brains he had was working equipment enough for whatever he planned to do. I tried not to bite my lower lip.

  "Be yourself," I bluffed. "I've got nosy neighbors and these walls are paper-thin. And Pete the doorman is on duty downstairs. You'd never get out of the building without being stopped. There's even a beat cop who walks past the front of this place every fifteen minutes on the hour. Why don't you run on back to Frankie and tell him I got the message this time? I don't want any trouble. I'll stay out of his hair."

  Carlo Fargo's expression altered. He looked genuinely surprised.

  "Who said anything about shooting? I ain't gonna use these guns unless you force me. Oh, no. I'm just gonna bounce you around a little so's you'll remember. Your spade chick too on account of I don't like her. That crack she made about me is gonna cost her some teeth."

  "I take the crack back," Melissa said fervently. "You're not a big ape. You're an ugly man. The ugliest. And if I had a spade I'd use it on you so fast it'd make your head swim."

  A grimace passed over Fargo's face, and then faded into a mean, snarling kind of unhealthy glare. He pushed the brim of his Borsalino back from his forehead with the nose of the .45. His eyes glinted.

  "You want it first, sister? Maybe you don't need a beating, at that. Come to think of it, when I finish messing up your man here, you and me just might use the bedroom. And you can fight all you want. Ain't nothing better than climbing onto a dame and making her like it. Turn around, Noon——" The .45 came up in his hand because I'd been balling my hands, without being able to stop myself. "I ain't gonna hit you too hard with this. I'm saving some real good punches for that puss of yours."

  I got the idea far faster than I wanted it. He was going to stun me from behind with the .45, just enough to daze me up so I'd be a fine punching bag for him when he turned me around. He was so sure of his own size and the threat of the guns and Melissa's female soul that he figured none of what he had to do would be too hard. He was some errand boy. And Frankie Conroy deserved him. And it was going to be useless to try to talk to him. He only understood two things: the power of force and his boss's instructions. I mentally cursed Terry Ricco. She was the only one who could have told Conroy about my midnight visit. But if she had done that, instead of calling the Law, why hadn't she also told him what a big help and noble schoolboy I'd been? It just didn't make sense.

  Unless, one of Conroy's men had been watching the apartment and simply seen me go in. But then, why hadn't he done something about the grenade-thrower? It was pretty damn confusing, all around. A headache.

  "Before I turn very slowly. Fargo," I said, trying to think of something, anything to put off the inevitable, "will you take say—ten thousand dollars—to call off this little party?"

  His chuckle was as mean as ever, and unbelieving.

  "You gotta be kidding! I wouldn't cross Frankie for fifty gees. And where would you get ten grand, chum?"

  I jerked a shoulder and a hand at the desk across the room, set against the wall to his left and behind him. The desk with the center drawer that held Johnny Ricco's .45. Melissa followed the motion, her eyes frowning. She was just as skeptical as Fargo was. Small wonder.

  "There. Center drawer. Terry gave me ten real big ones tonight because she hired me as a bodyguard. I suppose she told Frankie about the hand grenade that somebody tossed through her window tonight?"

  Fargo was no mental giant. I was going too fast for him and it was plain he had heard nothing about hand grenades at all. I could see him starting to think. He didn't like to think. It was an effort. Always.

  "Cut it out. What are you giving me? Hand grenade? You mean a pineapple? Frankie didn't tell me anything like that. Ten gees, huh?"

  "See for yourself. Maybe it's something Frankie would like to know about. His little lady hiring me out and all. What do you think?"

  "I think you're full of it. Right up to the ears."

  "Then go see for yourself. What's another second or two more? You could be doing Frankie a favor. It may be something he'd like to know about Miss Ricco. Then you'd be in real solid with him."

  Melissa Mercer stirred, smiling a cold smile at Carlo Fargo.

  "How stupid can you get? Don't you see Ed's trying to do you a favor? Might make you a real big man, Fargo."

  "Shut up," he growled at her, shifting the weapons in both fists, trying not to look at the desk. "I don't talk to niggers. You know what's good for you, me 'n and Noon will do all the talking."

  She put her lips together and stared down at her clasped hands. She didn't say another word. Fargo grunted with satisfaction, as if he had scored a point and then, as if suddenly overwhelmed with the possibility, backed up to the desk, keeping us both covered and nudged open the center drawer with the snub-nosed .32. He never took his eyes from us. I didn't expect him to. That dumb, nobody is. All I had bought was a little more time, a little more distance from Carlo and his brutal fists. And I knew what his foul language had cost Melissa, even though she always considered the source.

  Fargo didn't find ten thousand dollars, of course, but his roving hand found Johnny Ricco's .45. He glared at me across the room, pulling it out and hefting it, while he dropped the .32 gun into his side pocket. Now he had two .45s. One loaded, with the safety catch off—mine, which I had seen him unlatch and cock. The other—Johnny's, which had no slug in the firing chamber. It wouldn't have until Carlo Fargo jerked the sliding frame back, to arm the weapon. He wasn't dumb enough not to know about .45s, either. But that gun he was too bus
y to arm.

  "Where's the dough?" he growled. "There's no money in that drawer. Only this rod. You trying to pull something, Noon?"

  "Who me? I wouldn't kid you, Fargo."

  "You bastard," he said, gritting his teeth, starting for me. "You really are asking me to pretty you up, ain't you——?"

  It was then that strange, bubbling sounds came from the direction of the kitchen behind him. Only the coffee perking. An ordinary, unalarming series of rhythmic, familiar noises that any coffee-lover and house-type person would know in a second. Fargo was in enemy territory though, and the last time he'd heard coffee perking was probably too long ago to remember. He turned at the sound, expecting an attack or some other form of interruption. The apartment was too new to him and he just didn't know where everything was. Or might be. He was over alert.

  It was only a second that his eyes were not pinned on us.

  A flying interval of time that is over in a sneeze. Or a blink.

  But for myself and Melissa Mercer it was a godsend.

  She flung a pillow, one of the black-and-white square heavy bolsters parked on the sofa—and I did what I had to do. I left my slippers in a headlong, hurtling charge right at the big man. Rocketing.

  Carlo Fargo whipped back at us, quick to know what was happening, but too late to more than duck away from me, bringing up both .45s in a rapid, from-the-hip motion. Johnny Ricco's unloaded one was in his right hand, my deadly one was in his left paw. They were monsters.

  But the squared, heavy bolster caromed off his head and shoulders harmlessly and yet enough to give me an edge. The .45 in his right hand flung full into my oncoming face and he pressed the trigger. Melissa no longer could contain herself. She screamed, a quick, blurting bleat of terror. And heartbreak. A gun was a gun.

  In that churning instant, the world went crazy. Cockeyed crazy.

  Even with what I knew, my heart, brain and senses all collided, leaping, spinning, wheeling into a fantastic carousel of suspense.

  It is one thing to know a thing. It is quite another to have to put that knowledge to the test.

  The bore of the .45 looming in my face was the longest, darkest tunnel since the beginning of mankind. And in my life, such as it was.

  And I stood at the maw of the entrance, waiting for the train to come. The last train to nothingness roaring out of the blackness.

  With no stopovers.

  Except two stations.

  One called Life; another known as Death.

  It was a spot in time where you couldn't change trains, either.

  There were no transfers available on such short notice.

  There never can be.

  BRUTE

  Johnny Ricco's Army .45 went click! Big Carlo Fargo's ugly face showed surprise and then he quickly tried to do something with my .45. But the time-edge he'd had was all gone. And I was on him like a man who'd just watched a brute give his own son a going-over. Seldom was I so blinded with rage. But not so blind as to lose the cool a man needs if he'd going to do toe-to-toe tussles with a man some forty pounds heavier and a lot bigger. The rules are plain enough and self-evident in such cases. You use anything and everything you have or can lay your hands on. And, apart from his monstrous size, Carlo Fargo had a loaded .45. I went into him like a Mack truck piling up a bulldozer. I had to get between Melissa and those .45s.

  I drove my knee into the big man's crotch, wading in behind it and slicing the heel of my right palm down across the wrist of the hand holding the dangerous .45. Both blows were perfect.

  No man can stand up to a smash in the strike zone and Fargo was no exception. His face blurred in a fierce contraction of pain, his mouth flew open and spittle flew. The .45 fell from his hand, timed almost to the cracking sound my blow made on the small bones in his left wrist. His howl almost tore my head off. But I didn't hear it because I had closed with him, forgetting the harmless .45 in his other hand and throwing a one-two punch combination into the big, ugly face. My fists might as well have tattooed a wall. Fargo's seamy, hard-lined puss was like a hardened kneecap. My punches bounced off harmlessly. I backed away as he rumbled like a wounded bear, shook his head, fought the agony between his thighs and flung himself at me. He was hurt, all right, but like the picador-ed bull, he was going to go down the hard way. He was some big monkey—Carlo Fargo. He was all the animals there are in the zoo. And the jungle.

  A ham-sized hand flew out, got the lapels of my bathrobe and pulled. The fabric came away like a paper kite, shredded. I tried to jockey for position, but in one lurching, headlong sprawl of his huge carcass he had borne me backwards, smack into the long sofa. I went down. That curious, sweet aroma of his big body filled my nostrils. He smelled too good for the sort of man he was. But there was more to think about than that. Those great paws of his had come up, found my throat, and between a muttered, bursting explosion of curses and hoarse groans of agony, he started to give me what-for. I tried to crawl from under him but his weight was too much for me. As half-crazed with pain as he was, he was going to hang on to me until his head cleared— Until he paid me back in full for my two bone-breaking maneuvers.

  I tried to jab my hands into his face, clawed upward to break the stranglehold on my throat. But it was fast becoming useless. The crushing pressure of his ten iron fingers was making raw hamburger of my throat. The room began to tilt, to spin alarmingly. He had dropped the other .45 somewhere along the line, convinced it was empty but that meant nothing now. Desperately, I hoisted another knee, tried to butt him with it but we were too close together for that to do any good. I had lost all sight of Melissa in the melee. So had Carlo Fargo. He was mad enough to kill.

  Tough luck for him. He should have remembered her.

  But a lifesaver for me. Who knew what kind of a woman she was.

  I heard—rather than saw—the smacking, chopping, ugly sounds that the .45 made as it came down again and again on the lumpish head of Carlo Fargo, who had lost his hat a long time ago. I only knew I was free and breathing again when the viselike fingers left my throat so suddenly and the heavy body rolled away from me, thumping to the carpeted floor like a too-large sack of old laundry. Two large sacks.

  I stayed where I was, leaning against the sofa, still spread out on my knees along the floor. I waited for my head to clear, for the blood to come back into my throat. It was very difficult to breathe at all. And there was Melissa crouching next to me, hands on my shoulders, trying to prove to herself that I was all right. I'd heard the .45 she used on Fargo thump to the carpet, too. I know the noise a falling gun makes. It is high on the list of my favorite sounds. Along with Scottish bagpipes.

  "Is he dead?" I got it out as halfway between a croak and a wheeze. My throat was all jammed together: windpipe, Adam's apple, neck and all. "You done good, Mel. Real good," I gasped.

  "—can't kill a monster like that. It took three just to make him close his eyes. Oh, Ed—how can you go on living like this?"

  "Get me a drink, will you? So I can talk again——"

  Dimly, I heard her heels pattering away. I rose from the floor, nausea trying to work up from my stomach. I fought it off. When she got back, I was sitting somberly across the room in the chair, staring at Carlo Fargo inert on the floor. Standing up, he'd been big. Lying down, he seemed even larger. I felt like Robert Armstrong sadly contemplating the dead carcass of Kong lying on the Manhattan street after that fall from the Empire State Building. Only this wasn't Kong. This was a brute who worked for Frankie Conroy and he'd come to my house, with instructions.

  He was out cold. He didn't even sound as if he was breathing.

  Melissa handed me a strong belt of Scotch, watching me very closely as I gulped it down. It burned like crazy but it was worth it. Red blood danced around inside me again. I was alive.

  "Did I thank you?" I asked, taking her hand to put up to my face. ". . . Told you you were indispensable . . . how many gals are there who can crack heads for a guy while he's being strangled to death? Huh? Answer me."<
br />
  "Oh, stop it," she wailed. "It isn't funny, at all. Someday, soon, all your luck is going to go bad. Mine, too. If you hadn't put the coffee on and if he wasn't so dumb——"

  "Forget it," I said. "All the monkeys aren't in the zoo."

  "And what do we do now?" she asked despairingly. "I wanted just the two of us. Me and you. Alone. And now——" Her shrug was expressively Melissa. "Shall I call the police?"

  "No," I said. "This is a private squawk and I want Frankie Conroy to appreciate my delicacy in the matter."

  "What does that mean?" Her eyes clouded over unhappily.

  "I don't turn in his messenger and he might be grateful. If I do, then no amount of police protection could save me from Frankie's long arm. Anyway, this Ricco mess is about to break, I'd say. And I want all the players in their positions. You dig?"

  "I dig, but I don't like it."

  "Who does? But the game has rules, too. Fargo in the lock-up doesn't mean anything. Frankie's gratitude might. Anyway, that's the way I see it. Monks will understand later on."

  Melissa, keeping a watchful eye on the sleeping monster on the floor only two yards away, shivered and passed a hand over her brow.