Never Say No To A Killer

by Clifton Adams

I made sure that the hallway was empty, then went to work on Miss Kelso's night latch. The blade went in easily. I bent the knife toward the door and forced the point down the sloping shoulder of the spring bolt. When the point of the knife reached the leading edge of the bolt, I bent the blade the other way and the stronger tension of the steel blade snapped the spring-actuated bolt back into the latch body and the door was open. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.

  The apartment was much like mine but neater. It was almost mannish in its neatness and simplicity.

  I walked into the bedroom and this too was neat and simple: tweed at the windows, fruitwood furniture which was not expensive but too expensive to belong to the apartment. I started going through a chest of drawers and found nothing but lingerie, but there was a silver-framed photograph on top of the chest that interested me. It was a man of about fifty-five or so, a square-jawed, blunt-featured man with bristling gray hair, and a rather grim mouth that was bent determinedly up at the corners in something that might pass as a smile. Just for the hell of it I took the picture out of the frame, and there on the back scrawled in bold, blunt letters, was: “For Pat, with all my love, Alex.”

  It was strange, the way that picture affected me. Until that moment Alex Burton had been an abstraction, an inanimate obstacle that had been placed in my path and which had to be removed. Now it was different. The longer I looked at that picture, the more I hated the man it represented, and I didn't know exactly why, except that I resented the presence of that picture and its implications. I simply couldn't see a girl like Pat Kelso with a man like Burton. I thought of the girl I had seen at the mail box, then I looked at the picture, and I looked at the bed in Pat Kelso's room, and the three of them came together in my mind.

  With that picture in my hand, I thought: You sonofabitch, you lousy sonofabitch! without even knowing what I was angry about.

  At last I put the picture back in the frame. I made myself settle down. I got out of that bedroom.

  Stop it, Surratt! What kind of insanity is this, anyway, getting yourself steamed up just because another secretary decides it's more convenient to sleep with the boss than look for another job? She's just another broad, Surratt, and a broad you hardly even know, at that. So forget her. Think about the job at hand—that ought to keep you busy.

  It was good advice. And I took it. When a man starts thinking with his glands instead of his brain he's sunk, and I realized that I had been doing exactly that. I had been too damn long without a woman. After all, I was human, I was a man. Any other man would react the same way, I thought, after five years of celibacy.

  I was convinced.

  “It is perfectly normal and completely glandular,” I said aloud.

  I went back to the sitting room and got into action with the telephone directory. In the white pages I found Burton, and then I moved down to Burton Finance and Loans, and dialed the number. After a moment a blatantly nasal voice bleated: “Burtonfinanceandloans!”

  “I want to talk to Miss Kelso. Pat Kelso.”

  “Sorrynooneherebythatname!”

  I hung up and moved down to Burton Manufacturing and Construction Company. This time the voice was pleasant and professionally precise.

  I said, “I want to talk to Miss Kelso.”

  “Miss Kelso is on the other line, sir. Would you like to...”

  I hung up.

  Now I had a starting place.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE FIRST THING I did was rent a black Chevrolet sedan from a U-drive-it place which I found in the telephone directory. Then I started looking for the Burton Manufacturing and Construction Company.

  It turned out to be a sprawling brick building, and several smaller buildings, south of the city in the factory district. I circled the place slowly, looking it over, and finally found a parking place in front of the main building where the office workers would come out. Then I settled down to wait.

  This was the tedious way of getting at Burton, but it was the only way. One thing I was sure of, I wasn't going to stalk the lion in his lair, I wasn't going to elbow my way through hired bodyguards, hoodlums and flunkies to get at him—I was going to let Alex Burton come to me. I hoped he would come to me today, but if he didn't, I could wait. I was going to sit here and wait for Pat Kelso to come out of that building, and then I was going to follow her to the end of the line.

  Sooner or later it would lead me to Burton. More than that, it would lead me to Burton when he was most vulnerable. I knew these men like Alex Burton, these bigshots who like to throw their weight around but deep inside are scared in their guts. Because they are scared they hire themselves a pair of hotshots from Chicago, or Detroit, or some place, and they place armed guards and electric fences around their homes, and they tell themselves they are safe. No matter how many enemies they make, they are safe. Or so they think.

  But they are vulnerable. There are situations in which they have to stand on their own feet, naked and alone.

  With women, they are vulnerable. I never heard of one, no matter how great a coward he was, who prepared himself for a lady's bedroom by flanking himself with bodyguards.

  Oh, yes, they were vulnerable, all right, if you only waited.

  I waited.

  Noon came and only a scattering of people came out of the building. I went on waiting. The afternoon crawled by and my stomach growled for food and my throat was dry, but I didn't dare leave that car. There was always a chance that Pat would leave for some reason, or that Burton would pick her up, and I wanted to be on hand if anything like that happened.

  But nothing happened. There was a big parking area behind the main building and I watched the single exit like a hawk... still, nothing happened. Then, around four o'clock a squadron of taxi cabs began lining up in front of the building and I knew the time of waiting was about over. Soon I would know if today would be the day, or if I would have to do it again.

  Another fifteen minutes passed. A ridiculously long, black limousine slipped into the street and moved like a huge shadow between the files of parked traffic. The back seat was empty. As the limousine slid past me and turned into the entrance gate of the company parking lot I studied the driver. He was in full livery, a beefy, flat-faced kid of about twenty-three or four with punk written all over him. He yelled something to one of the parking attendants, then drove on around to the back of the building and out of sight. I turned my attention back to the main entrance of the building, where the office workers would soon be coming out.

  I almost missed that limousine as it slipped out of the parking lot and headed up the street in the opposite direction. If it hadn't been so big and black I would have missed it altogether—but it was pretty hard to miss a thing that big. I turned my head just in time to see that there was somebody in the back seat this time. All I could see was the passenger's head, but that was enough. The passenger was Pat Kelso.

  v Well, I thought, slamming the Chevy into gear, Miss Kelso believes in traveling first class, I'll say that for her. I pulled out in the middle of the street and finally got the Chevy headed in the direction the limousine was going.

  The limousine headed right toward the heart of town, me in the Chevy about a block behind. No use sticking too close, there wasn't much chance losing an automobile as big as that one. We hit a four lane expressway and everything was clear sailing—I breathed a little faster when we crossed North Hampton and kept on going. It meant Pat Kelso wasn't going home; that meant that Burton had sent his limousine to pick her up and now she was going to meet him. Surratt, I thought, this is your lucky day.

  The University Club was right in the middle of town, a red brick and white limestone monstrosity. Just beyond the main entrance to the club there was a drive-in entrance with a sign over it: UNIVERSITY CLUB GARAGE. MEMBERS ONLY. Directly in front of the main entrance there were two sidewalk signs which read: NO PARKING. NO STANDING. The curb between the two signs was painted red and there was white stenciled lettering standing boldly agains
t that red background. NO PARKING AT ANY TIME. The punk chauffeur blandly ignored the garage, the sidewalk no-parking signs, the red curb and white lettering, and parked the limousine against the curb.

  A uniformed doorman burst out of the University Club and had the limousine door open almost immediately. He showed his teeth, he grinned, he bowed, he helped Pat Kelso out of the limousine as though he were assisting a very aged and crippled queen, and finally, after he had done his job to perfection, he stood, head bowed, looking heart-broken because there was no other way he could help her.

  It was really quite a show. I only glimpsed it as I eased the Chevrolet up the street, but I got the idea.

  I circled the block two times and finally found an open space and slipped the Chevy in next to a parking meter. Five o'clock.

  I got out of the Chevy and strolled down to a cigar store next to the University Club garage. That limousine was still there in the no parking zone. The punk was out stretching his legs. He took a swipe or two at the gleaming hood with a dust cloth, then went over to one of the sidewalk signs and leaned on it insolently, dragging on a cigarette.

  He was some boy, that chauffeur, cocky as a Marine. A cop strolled by, making a great business of not seeing the limousine in the no parking zone, which was no easy feat. The punk grinned. He looked as though he had just pulled the Brink's robbery single handed.

  I strolled back up the street to a bootblack stand that I had noticed.

  “Shine 'em up, mister?”

  “Sure.”

  From my perch on the shine bench I could still see the limousine and the chauffeur. The boy went to work on my shoes, and I scanned the front page of the paper for something on the prison escape story, but nothing was there. On page eight there was a quarter column quoting the warden as saying I didn't have a chance. They knew all my old contacts, all my friends, and it was just a matter of time before I would have to get in touch with them. The police had several leads that were too hot for publication—which is what they always said when they knew absolutely nothing.

  I read the escape story through and felt fine. My old contacts were a thousand miles from Lake City. As for friends, I hadn't any. Roy Surratt against the world, I liked it that way. Not even John Venci had been a friend. I had admired his brain. He had dazzled me with criminal theory and his tremendous knowledge of criminal philosophy. I had been greatly impressed with his logical approach to crime, for, until I met John Venci, I had believed that I was the only modern criminal in existence who had actually developed a workable, livable criminal philosophy based entirely on logic.

  I had been wrong. John Venci had worked it out before me.

  “There you are, sir!” the shine boy said.

  I gave him a dollar and said, “Keep the change.”

  “Yes sir! Thank you, sir!” He grinned, pocketed the money, gave my shoes a couple of extra licks just to show he was doing a good job.

  I went out on the sidewalk, glanced toward the limousine. The punk had shifted over to the other no-parking sign and was busy leering at the white-collar girls waiting at the corner bus stop. I walked over to him and said, “Say, that's quite an automobile you've got here. I was just noticing it.”

  “Look, bo,” the amateur Bogart said from the corner of his mouth, “I got no time to stand here an' chew the rag with every farmer come by. You better move on.”

  “I just want to...”

  “I ain't interested,” he said, “Now move on before I get annoyed.”

  Why, you simian sonofabitch, I thought, you make one move in my direction, just one single move, and you'll be till sundown gathering your teeth off the sidewalk. I stood there for a full thirty seconds, almost hoping that he would start something.

  All he did was sweat. He didn't know what to do. The comic books don't tell you what to do in a case like that. I flicked a small ash from his whipcord jacket, then he blinked as I jabbed my forefinger into his solar plexus and fanned my thumb like a Hollywood gunfighter. “I enjoyed the chat, Humphrey. Maybe I'll run into you again, sometime.”

  I walked to the cigar store and looked back. The punk seemed a bit disturbed. He tried leaning on the no-parking sign, but it wasn't the same as it had been before. Finally he gave it up and got back in the limousine.

  I moved up the street, pausing at store windows, killing all the time I could. How long was Burton and his secretary going to stay in that club, anyway? Were they just having cocktails, or were they staying for dinner, or what? I sure couldn't wait for them on the sidewalk and burn Burton down when they came out, although the pure audacity of that fleeting thought did appeal to my sense of the bizarre. No, I thought, this has got to be fast and it has got to be bold, but not that bold!

  Finally, I saw them cross the sidewalk. Alex Burton, a little heavier than I would have guessed from that photograph, a little softer looking. Pat Kelso had one arm in Burton's and she was smiling at whatever Burton was saying. She was absolutely the most beautiful woman I ever saw. And it wasn't only because I had been five years without a woman!

  CHAPTER NINE

  I WAS IN THE Chevy and had the motor going by the time Burton and his secretary got themselves settled in the limousine. I slipped in behind them, about three cars back, when they came past me. The punk tooled the black job through the heavy traffic as though he were behind the controls of a Patton tank, stopping for red lights only when it pleased him, and I had a hell of a time keeping him in sight until finally he slipped back on the expressway. Then I closed the gap.

  I had no idea where we were going, except that we were headed away from the city, going north. Maybe, I thought, Burton has a house out here somewhere. If that's the case, I'm sunk. I sure wasn't going to have any luck getting close to Burton on his home field.

  Then my heart swelled just a little as the limousine turned off the expressway. I hung back as far as possible, thinking, now we'll find out. The limousine turned again, off a paved street onto a graveled road. When I reached the corner in the Chevy, I grinned. This was more like it. The cards were falling in my direction.

  There was a brick pillar on the turn-off. On the pillar there was a bronze plaque with raised lettering: CREST-VIEW CLUB. MEMBERS ONLY.

  A formal stand of cypress shielded the Crestview Club from the paved street, and a stone wall jealously guarded it on the side of the graveled road. I cruised by at a normal speed after the limousine had turned in, and right away I realized that this place was out of the question. There were two uniformed attendants at the big wrought iron entrance gate, and farther down, at the end of the stone wall, there was another attendant, or guard. This goddamn place, I thought, is only slightly less guarded than Fort Knox! Which could mean just one thing—there was gambling going on inside, big-money gambling, and the management was taking no chances on a heist.

  It looked like a fine place, just the kind of club Alex Burton would belong to, and a hell of a place to crash. I had seen enough to know that it couldn't be crashed, not by one man, anyway, so I drove on until I came to a dirt section line road, then circled the entire section and came back on the paved street to the brick pillar.

  The club was out.

  As long as Burton stayed in that place I couldn't reach him with a .37 millimeter cannon. But the night wasn't over yet.

  I nosed the Chevy off the pavement onto the club crossroad, but in the opposite direction. This end of the road was not graveled, since it apparently led to nowhere. I traveled for maybe a quarter mile between heavy stands of trees, then turned the car around and headed toward the pavement, facing the paved street and the club. About a hundred yards from the street I pulled the Chevy on a rutted shoulder, in the long shadows, and stopped.

  I would wait. I would wait and watch that road, and when the limousine came out I would follow it right to the end of the line. There was no sense beating my brains out on something I couldn't whip, it was much easier to wait. Sooner or later I would find an opening. Sooner or later Burton would relax.

&nbs
p; I checked the .38 that Dorris Venci had left for me. I checked the double action mechanism, the cylinder rotating mechanism, and the firing pin. I took five cartridges from the sealed box, wiped the cartridges carefully with my handkerchief and slipped them into the cylinder. I rotated the cylinder until the one empty chamber was in firing position and I eased the hammer down on it. The extra cartridges I dropped into my coat pocket; the .38 went into my waistband where it was convenient and stood little chance of becoming fouled with lint.

  I waited.

  Dusk became darkness, and I could see the misty lights of the club.

  Seven, eight, nine o'clock.

  I waited.

  Nine, ten, ten-thirty. I had no watch but I could hear those out-of-tune electronic chimes banging out each quarter hour, so I knew what time it was, although I tried not to listen.

  Eleven o'clock, eleven-fifteen.

  I checked the .38 again just to give my hands something to do. Eleven-thirty. I saw the limousine turn off the graveled road and onto the highway. If my chance was coming tonight, it would be soon. I waited until the limousine had passed, then switched my lights on and followed.

  After all the tailing and waiting and hoping, it seemed anti-climatic that the actual business of killing Burton should be so easy. Once more we took the expressway to town, and then the limousine turned west on North Hampton Street and I thought: By God, I've been doing all this tail chasing for nothing! We were headed right back where I started from. The apartment building.

  I switched off my lights and coasted to the curb about a block behind the limousine. I saw Burton and Pat Kelso get out of the car, and I saw the chauffeur standing there holding the door open for them. Burton and his secretary started up to walk to the front entrance. I headed for the limousine.

  I stuck my head in the door and said, “Whataya know, Humphrey? I had a feeling we might meet again sometime.”

  At first he just looked surprised. Then he recognized me and began to get mad. I guess he had been thinking about our chat in front of the University Club. He had it all planned out in his mind just how he was going to tell me off if he ever saw me again, but before he could say anything I stuck the .38 in his face. I put it right under his nose where he could smell the gun oil and steel.