“And that was enough for you, huh? That and five hundred dollars.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean—after you got inside. After you saw her—my wife—Kathy—did she look like a woman asking for that kind of a deal?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t—”
“They’re all the same to you, huh?”
“No.”
“When they’re naked and you got a razor in your hand, it’s all the same to you—”
“No! If I’d known who it was—”
“Shut up!”
Mickey’s hand was sweating and it slipped on the smooth, rounded edge of the bar. He looked at Roberts’ blood-smeared face and knew that the moment in which he could have killed him had passed. Maybe it had passed long before—that horrific night, when they had begged for killing and he had been tied up, helpless. He tried to recall it now, to push himself back in time to the horror of that night. But he couldn’t remember. He felt panic. How could he forget? Roberts’ face swam in his vision, and when he tried to replace it with the image of Kathy, he failed. It became Roberts and he saw there was nothing here to kill. Roberts was nothing, a blob, a breathing vegetable. In his life as a policeman, even the lowest, cheapest bum he had ever brought in had been an individual human being, a personality. Some had joked, some had cried, some had put up a fight. Roberts was nothing.
“This Frenchy,” Mickey said. “Married?”
“He said so. A Mexican girl.”
Mickey moved along the bar toward him and Roberts moved back, keeping step, rounding the return end of the bar, his hand trembling on the edge.
“Who do you care about, Roberts?” Mickey said. “Who means a lot to you?”
Roberts shook his head jerkily. He came to the dead end of his retreat, against the wall beside the back-bar mirror.
“Liz Peabody?” Mickey said. “You care about her? Big lover-boy. You carved your initials on Liz Peabody yet?”
Roberts crouched against the wall, staring.
“No—no, I never—Look, what more do you want from me?”
“Not much,” Mickey said.
“Listen, give me a break. I swear to God if I’d known who she was I never would have done it. He forced me into it. He conned me—”
“He conned you with five hundred dollars.”
Roberts’ legs gave way. He settled downward slowly till he was on his knees, one hand clutching at the bar. Mickey’s voice was strange in his own ears, toneless and remote.
“I am placing you under arrest. I will take you to the nearest detention facility and charge you with the murder of Kathleen Phillips on the night of July two, this year. Get on your feet.”
Roberts shook his head vaguely. Mickey bent, seized his belt and yanked upward.
“I said get up!”
Roberts came to his feet, hunched over, supporting himself with one hand on the edge of the bar. Mickey twisted and pushed him forward. Roberts stumbled, caught himself and walked to the center of the lobby, where he stopped.
“Upstairs,” Mickey said behind him. “Get a coat.”
Roberts looked half around.
“Liz—” he mumbled.
“Let’s go,” Mickey said. “You can get in touch with Liz later. Maybe the sheriff will let you make a phone call.”
It’s going to be a long way to a sheriff, he was thinking. Then I got to hang around and go through the routine over it. And when that other one—Frenchy—when his name gets mentioned, there’s a good chance he’ll get tipped before they can pick him up. That must be close to the Mexican border where he lives in California. He may not even be there now, and the longer it takes to find him, the more chance he’ll be tipped off. Maybe I ought to take Roberts out there with me, before I turn him in. That way I could maybe use him against the other one.
But Jesus, he thought, all the way to California!
“Come on!” he said sharply to Roberts. “Upstairs. I’m right behind you.”
Roberts made it to the stairs, got hold of the banister and started up. Mickey gave him plenty of start.
Going up after him, he was thinking, These local people aren’t going to like it, the way I’ll bring him in, all roughed up. They’re not going to believe me. They’ll have to check back, while I sit around. If I could pin a note on him and dump him on the steps…
Eight, nine steps above him, Roberts had paused. Mickey paused with him, waiting, no longer impatient, trying now to think it out, do a little planning. He looked down over the banister at the hotel desk, with the telephone and pen set.
If I could call in, they could check the story while we were on our way. I wouldn’t have to tell them I had Roberts—
Then he heard it, like a muffled thud, felt a subtle change in air pressure. He glanced up in time to see Roberts hurtling down on him from above, literally flying through the air, his bloody face twisted. Mickey tried to flatten against the banister, gripped it with one hand, but Roberts’ full weight struck him at that moment in the groin. He gasped for air and the impact tore his hand from the rail. He tumbled with Roberts, helpless and in agony, over and over, down the steps.
By a wrenching effort, he managed to hunch and draw in, to take the final fall on his back and shoulders rather than his head. He was fuzzy in his mind and, for a moment, helpless on the lobby floor, but he was conscious, and free of the weight of Roberts’ body. When his vision cleared he saw the taller one scrambling upward, reaching. Mickey was on his knees when Roberts turned on the stairs and the razor flashed in his hand. He felt his empty pocket and knew that Roberts had retrieved the only weapon at hand.
Mickey’s eyes fixed on the other’s feet, which would first betray the moment and direction of an attack. He rose stiffly, forcing his knees to lock. The knifelike pain in his groin nearly brought him down again. He made himself back off slowly, his eyes wary on Roberts, who now had no more to lose than he. The pain dulled as he moved, and he steadied inside. After a moment he extended one hand, the fingers curled.
“Come on,” he said. “You want to be that big a fool—I was hoping for this.”
Roberts brushed at his eyes with his free hand and started down the steps. He held the razor well out to one side. He was invulnerable to attack, but he could be handled, Mickey knew, if he could be brought to make the first move.
They were eight feet apart when Roberts cleared the last step. Mickey waited with slack arms.
“Any time, Roberts,” he said. “Or would it be easier if I put my hands in my pockets?”
The taunt was lost on Roberts. He advanced slowly, directly, giving no hint of a feint to either side. He was just short of arm’s reach when he stopped. Mickey backed off two steps, forcing him to come on again. There was a fixed grin on Roberts’ face, made hideous by the swollen nose and the smeared blood.
Mickey backed off again and Roberts hesitated, then came along. They moved in a series of rhythmic fits and starts, a macabre dance—two steps back, two steps forward, two steps back. Mickey felt his shoulders come up against the wall beside the heavy slab front door. This was going to be it now, any second, and what he had to remember was to keep his eye on the razor, no matter what, even if Roberts should feint with a kick to the groin, the deadly hand was his exclusive concern.
The kick came, sudden and vicious but short. Mickey’s guts twisted with the effort, but he kept his eye on the weapon. It moved in a silver arc toward his throat, then veered downward. He hunched his left shoulder into it and slashed at Roberts’ forearm with his own, felt the blade slide off his sleeve. Before Roberts could move inside to cut upward toward his face, he slammed his right fist into Roberts’ belly. Roberts sagged and slashed at him wildly.
Ducking, Mickey tripped and fell to one side, landing heavily on the wood floor. Then Roberts was on him, gasping for breath and for a couple of seconds Mickey lost sight of the blade. He felt it rip at the side of his jacket and a momentary sting under his left ribs. He got a knee up into Roberts
’ belly, used both hands and heaved him clear, then scrambled to his feet. They were in the center of the lobby now. Still clutching the razor, Roberts came up into a crouch, shaking his head. When he charged Mickey was ready. He hit Roberts with his left fist in the ribs and the razor cut toward him feebly, then wobbled in mid-air. With his right fist, and nearly all his weight behind it, he smashed at the bloodstained face.
Roberts careened backward, his back arched, fought for balance and, failing, stumbled against the newel post at the foot of the stairs. The sound of his head striking the solid wood was an ultimate, sudden-end sound. He fell on his side across the lowest step, rolled over once, then lay still.
Mickey found himself leaning against the desk, with stiff hands, panting for breath. After a minute he went to Roberts, looked at one of his eyes and felt for a pulse. He couldn’t feel any. Roberts appeared to be dead; if not yet, then soon, very soon. Suddenly it was cold in the lobby.
CHAPTER 12
It seemed to him that a long time had passed before he decided what to do. Actually it was no more than eight or ten minutes, and the sum of his reasoning came to this:
There’s no way to take him in now and keep those other two—Wister and the one who hired the two of them—from finding out about Roberts and lamming out. The local law here would hold me till they check clear back home, and maybe more than that. They would have to. By then they could never catch up with the others. There’s no other way; I’ll have to do it myself.
He looked at where Roberts lay sprawled on the step. Mickey was sure now he was dead.
One thing, he thought, nobody knows about it yet. Only me.
He climbed the stairs, went into Roberts’ room, found a suitcase and packed as much into it as he could. He left a few things. It didn’t have to be perfect. Roberts was a wastrel. Walking away on impulse, he might logically leave behind what it was inconvenient to carry.
When he had closed the suitcase he found a rag and moved about the room, wiping carefully everything he might have touched. It took him nearly an hour. He went to the room he had rented and got into his overcoat. He left the rest of his things and returned to the lobby. He set Roberts’ suitcase near the front door, went outside and walked back to the garage. He was mildly surprised to find it was snowing. It snowed softly, silently, an undulating interruption of his vision against the night sky. He could feel it on his face and in his hair.
He found the key to the Jeep, got it started and warmed it up for five minutes. Then he backed out and swung around to the front drive. He went into the hotel and searched till he found the razor. He put it in his own pocket for safekeeping. He took the suitcase out to the Jeep and put it in the front seat. Then he went back for Roberts.
The body was heavier than he had anticipated. He got it onto his shoulder after some work and carried it outside and down to the Jeep. He dumped it into the back and made sure it wouldn’t roll out, then returned to the porch and closed the front door, making sure it was unlocked.
He drove carefully in the direction of the brief tour they had taken earlier. It snowed continuously, but quietly, evenly. When he reached the dip in the woods, he saw that already the earlier ruts were barely discernible. The Jeep fought its way through the low spot and got onto higher ground. He drove in low gear to the fork in the road and swung as close as possible to the entrance to the abandoned mine. He parked facing it and left the headlights on, but when he started into the tunnel with the suitcase, he found the illumination extended no farther than half a dozen feet into the passage. He went back and got the flashlight, returned to the tunnel and carried the suitcase to the edge of the pit he had found earlier. He tossed the bag into the pit and watched dry dust spray up around it. When the dust settled, he went back to the Jeep and carefully worked Roberts’ body onto his shoulder.
It wasn’t like carrying the suitcase. The soft snow was deceitful underfoot. Twice he nearly fell. Inside the passage, he had to work his way over the fallen timber and nearly collapsed under his clumsy burden. By the time he reached the edge of the pit he was panting and his shoulder and back ached under the drag of the dead weight.
He stood looking down for a few seconds, then backed up two or three paces from the edge. There was too much weight casually to toss it away. He could feel himself falling in with it and being unable to get out. It would be a bad place to die. It was a bad place for Roberts to wind up, but Roberts had asked for it. It was too late to worry about that.
He knelt slowly and dumped the corpse onto the floor of the tunnel. It was a relief to get rid of the weight. He was shaking with tension and it took him a couple of minutes to get his breath and settle down. Then he got on his knees and rolled Roberts’ body toward the edge. It hung momentarily on the point of dropping off. He gave it a strong push, heard it slide, then tumble dryly into the hole. He got to his feet and threw the flashlight beam into the pit. The body lay in an awkward sprawl twelve or fifteen feet below the level of the tunnel floor.
Deep enough, he decided. There was little chance anyone would enter this shaft during the winter. The external signs of his approach to it would be covered by the snow, probably by the next day. It wasn’t cold enough in the tunnel to preserve the body intact. By spring it would be a skeleton.
He made his way back to the Jeep. He had started to back into the turn when he remembered the razor in his pocket. He climbed down, went back into the tunnel and tossed the razor into the pit. It landed on Roberts’ sprawled right thigh, poised precariously, then slid off to the ground. He went back once more to the Jeep and started the short drive to the hotel.
* * * *
In the garage he checked the Jeep for signs of the use he had made of it. There were stains here and there and he cleaned them off, using an oiled rag he found on a nail. He wiped the steering wheel and all the places he might have touched the Jeep. He replaced the flashlight where it had been stowed, got into his own car and backed it out of the garage. There were tire marks where it had been, but they were overlapped by others and on the dusty floor would not be noticeable except under close scrutiny. Liz Peabody, he thought, might spend some time grieving for her lost lover, but he doubted that she would launch an investigation. He judged her to be a woman of some pride, though not much sense. Still she would probably have sense enough not to call in the local sheriff to find her boyfriend who, apparently, had run away.
He closed the garage, drove to the front drive and returned to the hotel. In the tavern, where the fire had died, there was surprisingly little muss. He decided there was nothing he could do about the slashes Roberts had made in the leather sofa. The same would go for the broken bottle in the fireplace. They were things Roberts might have done while drunk. There were bloodstains here and there and he cleaned them up as well as he could.
There was more to do in the lobby and he worked at it methodically and at length. When he finished, he looked at his watch and it was five o’clock in the morning. There would be only two more hours of darkness and it would take him at least an hour to drive down the canyon.
He went up to his room at the back of the building, turned off the radiators, drew down the shades and restored the room to the condition it had been in when he had come. He wiped off everything he had touched, put on the gloves he had removed hours before, picked up his suitcase and went out.
After he had got in the car, he took a last look at the high, square building. The snow was falling in thick, slow waves, without wind. Even as he watched, it piled greyly on the wide steps, covering his footprints, laying a soft film of obscurity over his path from one world to another. He put the car in gear, worked his way onto the road and drove off toward the canyon. The snow fell silently, filling the tracks of his departure.
* * * *
He checked into a motel on the road to Denver and went to bed. It took him a long time to get to sleep and when he woke in the middle of the afternoon he felt stunned by fatigue. He made himself get up, drove to a public telephone booth and
made a call to the Denver airport. Then he put in a call to the downtown hotel where he had left Irene. Her voice was drowsy when she came on, but quickened when she recognized him.
“Hi, honey, where are you?”
He couldn’t tell whether she had anyone with her. He didn’t care, except that if there was someone listening, it would be a bad time to mention Lou Roberts.
“Still want to go to Las Vegas?” he said.
“Sure, honey.”
“You can get a plane tonight at eight o’clock. Meet me at the airport.”
“Sure. Well, how will I get to the airport?”
“Just have a boy carry your suitcase down to the lobby and call a taxi. The hotel owes you a refund on advance rent. Stop at the desk and ask for it.”
“Okay. But I haven’t got a suitcase.”
He braced himself against the wall of the booth and forced himself to speak patiently and distinctly.
“You’d better buy one,” he said. “The hotel owes you at least forty dollars. You can get a good suitcase for forty or fifty.”
“Well okay, Joe.”
“Be sure to make it on time. I won’t be able to wait for another plane.”
“Sure, honey. Where shall I meet you?”
“At the United Air Lines Terminal. Ask the taxi driver when you get to the airport. He’ll show you.”
“All right. Be seeing you, honey.”
When he hung up he was sweating lightly. The air was an icy blast against his face as he left the booth.
* * * *
He checked out of the motel, had lunch at a roadside cafe and he got to the airport in time to pick up Irene’s ticket. It was six o’clock by then and there was no sign of Irene. He bought a newspaper but found he couldn’t make himself read it. Only its date finally seeped through to him. He realized it was two days before Christmas. He toured the airport concessions in search of a gift, finally settled on a bottle of good whisky in a Christmas package.
Irene arrived at seven-thirty-five. He saw her pause in the entrance and search the room with her vague, defective vision. When she found him, she lifted her hand in tentative greeting. She was wearing her new coat and a new hat she had bought for herself. Her goods legs strode freely and she wasn’t putting on much wriggle. When she reached him, a little breathless, smiling with those teeth, he caught her in one arm and kissed her, hardly realizing what he was about. It was a surprise to her, too, and she looked at him with some suspicion.
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