The bang of the gun sounded violently loud and the flash was blinding. A slug zipped over my head. If I hadn't been flat on the ground, he would have nailed me. He hadn't shot away from me: he had shot at me, and that showed if nothing else could, just how professional he was.
The flash came from the top of the steps, but from the sudden flurry of sound, I knew he had jumped off the steps and was crouching behind them, facing me.
I began to edge backwards, expecting any moment to hear t bang from his gun and feel a slug rip into me.
Then I saw him.
Something white moved about fifteen yards from me. That could only be his white tie. For a professional gunman, he wasn't too smart to wear a white tie: a target, even a sucker like me couldn't very well miss.
Very cautiously, I lifted the gun and sighted it on that white blur. My finger began to take up the slack on the trigger, then a thought dropped into my mind. Suppose I killed him? What then?
In a moment of emergency like this, it's surprising how fast the mind can work. If I killed him, I would have his body on my hands. What about the Mexican? What would I do with him? Suppose I had to kill him too?
I couldn't call the police and report an attempted robbery nor tell them I had shot these two. Roy couldn't substitute for me again. The M.O. might be old fashioned, but not old fashioned enough not to know these two men had died while Roy and Lola were on their way back from Wentworth. The police would want to know who had killed them. If they found out I had killed them, there would be Farnworth waiting for me.
Hesitating, I lowered the gun. That was a mistake.
The slight movement must have caught Eddy's eyes.
I felt a numbing blow in my chest as, at the same time, I heard the bang of his gun and saw the flash.
I didn't feel any pain.
It was as if someone had turned off a switch inside me, cutting off my strength the way you cut off an electric light.
I felt the hot sand against my face, and although I made an effort to keep a grip on the gun, it suddenly became impossibly heavy. I felt it slip away from me as a hard pointed shoe thudded into my ribs.
That kick released a white hot pain inside my chest. I was suddenly going down into the scorching mouth of a volcano. I tried to yell for help, but no sound came out of my throat, only a sudden rushing of hot blood that threatened to drown me.
The clock was spinning backwards.
I was running blindly down the stairs that led away from Henry Cooper's luxury penthouse. I was wrestling again with the doorman, then I was in the street, hearing the thud of feet as the cop chased me. I heard again the bang of his gun and the tearing, blinding pain in my chest.
Roy told me later he had found me lying by the kitchen door.
Both he and Lola had known something was wrong as there were no lights showing.
Roy had gone around, shouting for me. It took him some minutes to find me, and when he did, he thought I was dead.
Between them, Lola and he carried me into the cabin and got me on the bed. It was while Roy was cutting away my shirt that I came to.
I found him bending over me, his face white, his hands shaking.
I looked beyond him, and there was Lola standing behind him, as white and as tense as he was.
I felt pretty bad, and it was an effort even to shift my head.
"What happened?" Lola demanded, coming around Roy and bending over me. "Who did it?"
I tried to speak, but the words wouldn't come.
Roy said, "Leave him alone. Let me fix him."
I was drifting away again into darkness. I wondered if I was dying: the thought didn't worry me. It was with a sense of relief that as I lost consciousness, the pain went away.
The sun was shining through the window when I became conscious again.
Roy was still there, sitting by the bed, watching me, but Lola had gone.
"How do you feel?" Roy asked, leaning forward.
"Okay."
The word was an effort to get out. I felt curiously weak, and there was an odd floating sensation inside me.
"Look, Chet," Roy spoke slowly, pronouncing each word clearly as if he were talking to a foreigner, "you're pretty ill. I want to get a doctor to look at you, but Lola won't let me. She said you wouldn't want a doctor."
"I don't want one."
"You'd better have a doctor, Chet." His face was anxious. "You're pretty bad. I've done what I can for you, but it's not enough."
Bad as I felt, my brain wasn't paralysed. A doctor would have to report to the police when he found I had been shot: then Farnworth.
Through the open window came the sound of the impatient honking of a horn.
Muttering, Roy got to his feet.
"These truckers are driving me nuts. I'll be back."
I closed my eyes and dozed off.
The sun had shifted to the back of the lunch room when a movement close to me brought me awake.
Lola was bending over me.
"Who was it who shot you?"
"Two gunmen," I said. She had to bend close to hear me. "I've never seen them before."
"Did they open the safe?"
I looked at her. I scarcely recognised her. There was a scraped, bony look on her face that made her seem ten years older. I could see tiny sweat beads along her upper lip. Her face was chalk white.
"I don't know."
And lying there, feeling this odd floating sensation inside me, I didn't care.
"Did they mention the safe?" Her voice was shaking.
"No."
"It's shut. It doesn't look as if they tampered with it." I could see her breasts under her overall rising and falling in her agitation. "I must know! Suppose they've taken the money! I must know if it has gone!"
I thought of Eddy. He was a professional. If he had found the safe, he would have opened it. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of safes could open that sardine can.
"They could have taken it," I said.
This effort at talking was making me feel bad. I began to float away into darkness again.
"I must know! Tell me how to open the safe!"
Her white tense face hung over me. I could smell the sweat of fear from her. I could feel the frustrated greed coming out of her like the sound waves from a radio set.
The darkness closed up around me.
From a long way off, I heard her saying, "I must know! Pull yourself together! Tell me how to open it!"
The voice, the room and the sunshine coming through the window were suddenly no longer there.
II
For the next three days I hung between life and death. I knew it, and I didn't care.
I wouldn't have lasted a day if it hadn't been for Roy. He scarcely left my side, and when I developed a fever, he sat over me with an ice bag and kept right by me until the fever broke.
There was a time, when the fever was at its height, that, as I lay burning and in pain, I suddenly saw Carl Jenson in the room.
He had the same bewildered expression on his face that I had seen when he had caught me before the open safe. I tried to speak to him, but the words didn't come. After a while, he went away. I didn't see him again. That was when I nearly died. Later, Roy told me he had given me up, then the fever broke and I began to get better.
It wasn't until the seventh day that I was able to talk about Eddy and the Mexican.
"They cleared out the till," Roy told me, "and they took the gas money and most of the food."
I wondered about the safe. I wondered if Eddy had found it and had opened it, but I didn't mention it to Roy.
"It seems to me you're going to pull out of this now," he went on. He looked thin and tired, and there were dark smudges under his eyes that told of loss of sleep. "It was a near thing. You are lucky."
"You saved my life, Roy," I said. "Well, that makes the score even. Thanks."
"What did you expect me to do—let you croak?" He grinned. "It's been pretty rugged, keeping the place going and nursing
you, but now I reckon I can catch up on some sleep."
I had been out of action for eight days and nights. During that time, Lola hadn't been near me. I wondered if she had made any headway with Roy during that time.
"How are you and Lola making out?" I asked.
He shrugged.
"I scarcely see her. I've been too busy looking after you." It was too glib, he didn't look at me. I knew he was lying.
"I've warned you, Roy. She's dangerous."
"She isn't cutting any ice with me, and she never will," he said. There was a long pause while we looked at each other. Then abruptly he asked, "What really happened to Jenson?"
I wouldn't have told him unless I was sure she had made an impression on him. I was desperate enough to try to scare him off her by telling him the truth.
"She murdered him, and I was fool enough to bury him."
I saw his eyes go suddenly blank the way they always went when he heard something he didn't want to hear.
"She murdered her first husband too," I went on. "She's a killer, Roy, so watch out."
"Do you realise what you are saying?" he asked, leaning forward, his face tight and hard.
"I know what I'm saying: I'm warning you."
He stood up.
"I don't want to hear any more of this. Can't you see it puts me on a spot?"
"You've got to be warned, Roy. You don't know her the way I know her."
He moved to the door.
"I guess I'd better get back to work. I'll be in again. You take it easy."
Without looking at me, he went away.
Well, he knew now. He would be on his guard. She wouldn't fool him as easily as she had fooled Jenson and me.
But I didn't know I was already too late with my warning. I found that out the following night.
Roy had moved his bed into the sitting-room to give me more room.
He had told me if I wanted anything to call him, but if it wasn't urgent he would be glad to get some sleep. That was understandable. I said I would be all right and for him not to worry about me.
Since I had told him about Jenson's death, I knew it wasn't the same between us, and I knew it could never be the same with us again. It was in the atmosphere rather than in his attitude. He had always been poker-faced, and now he was even more so.
Neither of us mentioned Lola. From time to time I saw her from the window, moving from the lunch room to the bungalow. She continued to keep away from me.
It was on the following night that I realised my warning had come too late.
Around midnight, Roy shut up the lunch room and turned off the light. I had seen Lola go to the bungalow a few minutes after eleven o'clock. The lights were out in the bungalow by the time Roy came into the cabin.
He opened my bedroom door silently and stood there, listening.
I had turned off my light some time ago. I made no sound
"Are you awake, Chet?"
His whisper was so soft I scarcely heard it
I stayed motionless, not saying anything. Then I heard the door shut softly.
I waited, hoping that what I knew was going to happen wouldn't happen, but of course it did
For a few tense minutes I lay looking out of the window, then I saw Roy come out of the shadows. He walked quickly across to the bungalow, paused to look back at the cabin, then he opened the front door and went in.
I might have known he couldn't have resisted her for those eight days and nights when she could have worked on him uninterrupted.
I didn't blame him. I knew her technique. I had been kidding myself all along that Roy was indifferent to women, and Roy had been kidding himself too.
I felt helpless and pretty bad: jealousy didn't come into it, but fear did.
Once she had her claws in Roy, she would persuade him to open the safe. Then she would murder him. I was sure of that. I had warned her he wouldn't let her have the money once he got his hands on it. She would murder him, and then she would murder me. She would then hide the money and send for the fat sheriff. How she would explain what I was doing in pyjamas with a bullet wound in my chest I couldn't imagine, but she had had eight days to dream up a story and I was pretty sure, by now, she had one ready. I had given Roy a description of Eddy and the fat Mexican. He had certainly passed the descriptions on to Lola. She might even claim that these two had murdered Roy and me while she was in Wentworth There were any number of angles she could use.
I lay there, enduring the nagging pain in my chest, while I watched the bungalow and schemed.
It was a little after two o'clock when I saw him come out. He closed the front door, then walked over to the cabin. He came in silently.
I reached for the light switch, and as he eased open my door I turned on the light.
He stood, startled, in the doorway, staring at me. He had on a singlet, a pair of trousers, and his feet were bare.
"I didn't mean to wake you," he said. "I just looked in to see if you were okay."
"Come in. I want to talk to you."
His eyes shifted.
"It's after two. I want to get some sleep."
"I want to talk to you."
He came in and sat down, away from me, and lit a cigarette.
"What's on your mind?"
"She's thrown a hook into you, hasn't she?"
He blew a cloud of smoke that half screened his face, then he said, his voice harsh, "You're pretty sick, Chet. You don't want to work yourself up. Suppose we talk about this tomorrow? You need your sleep—so do I."
"I may be sick, but if you don't watch out, you're going to be a damn sight more than sick— you're going to be dead. You didn't answer my question."
"No woman will ever hook me," he said, his face now deadpan.
"Are you trying to kid me or yourself?"
He didn't like that
"Okay, if you must know, I took what she threw at me, but there are no strings to it—I'll take care of that."
"Did she ask you to open the safe?"
His eyes narrowed.
"Safe? What safe?"
"Jenson's safe."
He ran his fingers through his hair as he stared at me.
"What about Jenson's safe?"
"Did she ask you to open it?"
I saw by the puzzled expression on his face that she hadn't. I began to breathe more freely. At least, this time, I wasn't going to be too late to warn him.
"She's never mentioned a safe."
"She will, and she will ask you to open it."
He made an exasperated movement with his hands.
"What the hell is this about? What are you getting at?"
"There's something in that safe she wants," I said, "and when she wants something as badly as she wants this thing in the safe she will stop at nothing to get it, and I mean nothing. She shot her husband to get it. She tried to blackmail me into getting it, and now you arrive. Someone else who can open the safe, and she's starting to soften you up so if you open it she can take you by surprise and murder you. It sounds fantastic, doesn't it? It isn't! She'll murder you as she murdered her first husband, as she murdered Jenson and very nearly murdered me. I'm telling you—don't open that safe!"
By now the effort of talking had taken so much out of me I was sweating, and the pain in my chest was making me short of breath. I watched him in despair, for there was no change of expression, just the dead-pan look, and the eyes that had gone a shade darker.
"You sound crazy in the head," he said. "What is it she wants so badly?"
I wasn't going to tell him it was over a hundred thousand dollars in hard cash. I wasn't that much of a fool.
"I told you the cops suspected she had murdered her first husband," I said. "She did murder him. Before he married her, Jenson made her sign a confession and it is in the safe. I've seen it.
Until the safe is open and she can destroy the confession, she's jail bait, and she knows it."
He rubbed the back of his neck, frowning.
"Are
you dreaming all this or is it true?"
"She shot Jenson and she would have shot me only I got the safe door shut before she could pull the trigger. She knew I was the only one here who could open the safe and that saved my life. Now she has you in her sights. Don't open that safe, Roy."
Come Easy, Go Easy Page 20
