Panic!

by Bill Pronzini

“The john,” Vollyer said apologetically. He was the picture of guilelessness.

  “Outside,” the target told him.

  “Oh. Well, thanks.”

  “Something I can get for you?”

  “A glass of milk,” Vollyer said. “Nice and cold.”

  “Coming up.”

  Vollyer leaned against the counter and watched the target open a refrigerator unit, take out a bottle of fresh milk, pour from it into a tumbler. The bottle went back into the refrigerator, and the tumbler was set before Vollyer on the counter top. He lifted it, tasted, drank deeply. There was nothing like a cold glass of milk in the morning, especially on a hot morning like this one.

  The door opened and Di Parma came inside. He crossed to where Vollyer stood, looked at the target, and then said, “Okay.”

  “No cars?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Clean in here,” Vollyer said. “Let’s get it done.”

  The two men backed off several steps, and their hands went down to the pockets of their jackets. The target had his mouth open to ask Di Parma if he wanted anything, but when he saw the expressions on the faces of the two men, he pressed his lips together. His eyes narrowed, and his forehead wrinkled into deep horizontal lines.

  Vollyer and Di Parma took out their guns.

  The target made a half-step backward, involuntarily, and his buttocks came up hard against the refrigerator unit. His eyes bulged with understanding, and a thin stream of saliva worked its way out over his lower lip and trailed down along his chin. “Oh Jesus,” he said. “Oh Jesus.”

  The two guns were steady on him, and he couldn’t run, there was no place for him to go. He knew he was going to die, and the knowledge released his sphincter muscles; the odor was strong and sour in the hot, still room.

  “No,” he said, “no, there’s some kind of mistake.”

  “No mistake,” Vollyer said quietly.

  “Listen, please, they promised me it was all right. They said I could get out; they said nothing would happen. Listen, I’m clear, I’m out of it, I never said a word, I’m no fink. Listen, don’t you understand? For Christ’s sake!”

  “All right, Livio,” Vollyer said.

  “No!” the target screamed. “No, no, no, no!”

  They shot him six times, three times each, the bullets transcribing a five-inch radius on his upper torso. The target died on his feet, the way he was supposed to die, without making another sound.

  Four

  Lennox finished stacking crates of tinned goods against the near wall of the storage basement, and rubbed sweat from his eyes with the back of one arm. It was close in there, the air thick with fine particles of dust. The back of his throat felt hot and parched.

  He tried to work saliva around inside his mouth, but the ducts seemed to have dried up. A spasm of brittle coughing seized him, and he pushed away from the wall to stand in the middle of the still-cluttered room. His mind felt sluggish, and yet somehow claustrophobic. He had an irrational impulse to rush headlong into one of the walls and pound it with his fists. He wanted to cry. The need to vent the deep brooding futility in some tangible way, to rid himself of the pressure building in heavy waves within the shell of him, was almost overpowering.

  He thought: What’s happening to me? Why can’t I get straight with myself any more?

  He dragged air into his lungs in open-mouthed suckings, and the paroxysm of coughing subsided. The impression of crushing entrapment retreated with it, and he felt a little better, a little more in control. His hand trembled only slightly when he raised it to wipe away the fresh sheen of sweat on his forehead.

  Phyllis, you bitch, he thought.

  And then he wondered if Perrins would let him have a beer. Christ, he needed one; his throat was so dry it was abrasively sore. Well, why wouldn’t Perrins let him have one? He was working for wages, wasn’t he? If he couldn’t get one gratis, then let the bastard take it out of his salary.

  Lennox drew a shuddering breath and moved slowly to the set of stairs. He climbed them, working the rough edge of his tongue over his lips, and pushed the trap door up; its hinges were new, oiled, silent. Once in the storeroom, he lowered the trap, stepped around the cartons toward the door leading into the café—a soft-moving man by nature, creating no sound on his rubber-soled shoes.

  He heard Perrins’ voice just before he reached the door. “Listen,” it said, “don’t you understand? For Christ’s sake!”

  The tone, the inflection, of those words caused Lennox to pull up next to the door, concealed by it but close enough so that he could lean forward and look around it into the café. He did that curiously, cautiously. He saw Perrins standing there behind the lunch counter, face the color of buttermilk, and he saw two neatly dressed men positioned in front of the counter, partially turned away from him. But their faces were clear in profile, hard and impassive, faces carved in stone, and he heard one of them say “All right, Livio,” and he saw Perrins put up his hands as if to ward off a blow, heard him begin screaming “No!” again and again. Lennox saw the guns then, for the first time, saw them and understood, in that fraction of a second before the room became filled with smoke and explosive sound, just what kind of scene was being enacted before him.

  He watched in a kind of numbed horror as the deafening echo of the gunshots faded and red blossoms appeared on the front of Perrins’ white shirt, trailing down like thickly obscene tear streams over the white apron, the white trousers. Perrins stopped jerking with the impact of the bullets and stood very still for a long, uncertain moment—and then he fell, like a tree, like a small and not particularly significant tree cut down by a woodsman’s saw, straight, rigid, toppling sideways, disappearing with a sound that was not very loud at all.

  The two men put their guns away, and Lennox watched one of them—the fat one—nod and motion to the other, watched that one move across to the door, look out through the window. The fat one was smiling. He went over to the counter, wiped off a half-filled glass of milk with a pocket handkerchief, and then looked down at the slats behind. He was still smiling when he straightened up again.

  Lennox pulled his head back. He wanted to vomit. Cold blood, they shot him down, killers and they, God what if, search they’ll search and they’ll find me and they’ll, oh God God God

  He shook his head, and shook it again. No. No! He had to get out of there, they couldn’t find him, he had to get away from there. His head swiveled wildly, and his eyes touched the open window, the window, and beyond—the desert.

  Slowly he backed away, staring at the door, and the sweat broke and ran like water from skin blisters the length of his body. Cheeks gray-white, hands palsied, he reached the window, swung one leg over the sill, and nobody came through the door. The other leg, soft now, hurry, hurry, and he was outside, shoes sibilant on gravel, careful, moving away, moving to safety, the desert out there big and empty, hot, the sun spilling fire down on the grotesque cacti, the spindly brush, the strange and awesome formations of rock—waiting for him.

  Run, Lennox.

  Run!

  Five

  Di Parma said, “All clear,” and stepped away from the window.

  Vollyer brushed a speck of something from the sleeve of his cashmere jacket and went over to join him at the door. They passed through the fly screen, letting it bang shut behind them, the sound like a faint, tardy echo of the gunshots a few moments earlier. Neither of them looked back.

  They walked out from under the shade of the wooden awning into the white radiance of the sun. Vollyer blinked rapidly against the hot, strong glare which penetrated the smoky lens of his sunglasses; he was going to have to see an optometrist, all right. Nothing to worry about, of course, like with the mild ulcer—all part of the game—but you still had to be careful, you still had to observe the basic rules.

  When they reached the car, Vollyer started quickly around to the passenger side. He had gotten to the rear deck when Di Parma said sharply, “Harry!”

  Vollyer s
topped, turned, and Di Parma was pointing off toward the stretch of desert behind the café, visible between there and the rest rooms. The harsh light made Vollyer’s eyes sting as he followed the extension of Di Parma’s arm—and then he saw what Livio was pointing at, on high ground a few hundred yards distant.

  There was somebody out there.

  Somebody running.

  Di Parma said, “What the hell?” as Vollyer hurried up beside him. “What the hell, Harry?”

  Vollyer did not answer. Behind the sunglasses, his eyes glittered in their watered sockets. The runner was gone now, vanished on the other side of the high section—but Vollyer’s quick, sharp mind had registered several facts from his single prolonged glimpse: white shirt, long sleeves rolled up, tails pulled out and fluttering over dark blue trousers; lean, agile, but not particularly young, he didn’t move like a kid; long, shaggy dark hair.

  Vollyer stared intently at the empty, rugged landscape. No flash of white, no movement. The terrain grew steadily rougher in the distance, sprinkled thickly with formations of rock, heavy with prickly pear, creosote bush, giant saguaro. There were hundreds of places to hide out there—and conversely, the irregularity of the land made an effective shield to cover continued flight.

  Di Parma moistened his lips, put his right hand into the pocket of his jacket. “Where did he come from? Christ, we checked everything here.”

  “He wasn’t running for the exercise,” Vollyer said. “He came from here, all right.”

  “You think he saw us make the hit?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Harry, we’ve got to go after him.”

  “Soft now, soft,” Vollyer said. “There’s no cause to panic. You take the car and pull it around behind the café, up close against the building so it can’t be seen from the highway. Then you go out there and see if you can find him. I don’t think there’s much chance of it now, but maybe you’ll get lucky. Fifteen minutes, and then you come back. Understood?”

  Di Parma nodded. “Where’ll you be?”

  “Back inside.”

  “What for?”

  “Move, Livio, move.”

  Di Parma hesitated for a moment; then he brought his lips into a flat line and slipped in under the wheel. Vollyer was already moving across the sun-baked lot, pulling on a pair of thin doeskin gloves, when Di Parma jerked the Buick into gear and drove it around behind the café.

  A little spice to liven up a routine assignment, Vollyer thought as he pulled open the fly screen and stepped inside again. The game takes on added dimensions, added excitement. His eyes still glittered, and there was a half-smile on his plump mouth.

  Moving quickly, not looking at the buzzing ring of flies circling hungrily above the lunch counter, he reversed the placard in one of the windows so that it read Closed facing outward; then he pulled the shades down and switched off all the lights at a fuse box located to one side of the counter. He set the bolt lock on the door, crossed through the half-gloom—his steps echoing hollowly in the heavy, oppressive silence—to where a pay phone was located on the rear wall. He cut the cord on it with a penknife from his pocket, put the knife away, and entered the storeroom.

  His eyes prowled the interior briefly before he went to the open window and looked out. He could see the Buick pulled in close to the rear wall of the building, and when his gaze swept over the desert Di Parma was moving along the high ground in quick, jerky steps. Nothing else moved on the radiant terrain.

  Vollyer turned from the window, and as he did so, his eyes drifted down to the cot which was pressed up against the wall beneath it. The edge of something, a small bag, protruded slightly from under the cot. He knelt and pulled the bag out and zippered it open: soiled laundry, a shaving kit, a few miscellaneous items. And, at the bottom, a small flat manila envelope.

  The envelope contained a full-color portrait photograph, 5x9 size, of a man and a woman. They were smiling at one another, hands entwined, and in the background was a table piled with brightly wrapped presents, a crystal punchbowl containing a burgundy-colored liquid and slices of citrus fruit, a double-tiered anniversary cake. The woman was slim, fair, with blond hair streaked in silver; the man was lean, dark-haired, vaguely handsome. He was the right size and coloring to be the one running out on the desert.

  Vollyer turned the photograph over. Across the top, in light blue fountain ink, was written: The Lennoxes, Two Down and Forty-Eight to Go. Below that was a photographer’s stamp—Damon Studio—but no listing of city or state.

  He put the portrait in his pocket, rezippered the bag, and returned it beneath the cot. Then he straightened, glancing around again. After a moment he went to the large stack of cartons on the far side of the storeroom—and behind it, he found the lowered trap door.

  There was no need for him to raise the door. He knew what would be beneath it, and he knew now where he and Di Parma had made their mistake. Well, no, not a mistake exactly, how could you figure the target putting up a transient just prior to their arrival? They had been careful; it was just one of those things. All part of the game.

  Vollyer retraced his steps to the window, climbed out ponderously, and pulled the sash down after him. When he turned, he saw that Di Parma was coming back now, running awkwardly across the stark earth. He went down to the corner of the building and looked at the highway, and it was still void of traffic; then he moved out to meet Di Parma.

  Livio’s face was dust-streaked, and there was a three-cornered tear in the sleeve of his suit coat. He was tired and sweating and strung up tight. He said grimly, unnecessarily, “There’s no sign of the son of a bitch.”

  Vollyer inclined his head speculatively. The fact that Di Parma had not flushed Lennox—the odds were good that it was this Lennox—indicated that the runner had kept on running, that he hadn’t chosen to hide in the rocks, waiting to make his way back to the oasis after Vollyer and Di Parma had gone. Of course, there was still the possibility that he had been hiding out there, was at this moment hiding, and that Livio had overlooked him; but Vollyer knew something about human nature, and as far as he was concerned, the runners would always run, the hiders would always hide, the fighters would always fight. People reacted in the same way time after time; they were predictable. This Lennox was obviously not a fighter, and he was obviously not a hider; if he had been either one, he would have remained out of sight in the storeroom or in that cellar until he had the place to himself—and then he would have gone directly to the cops to volunteer help or he would have gathered up his belongings and slipped out of there quickly and quietly. But instead, he had run; and that made him a runner, and the bet a safe one that he was still running.

  This fact made him no less dangerous to the two of them; but the way Vollyer saw it, he and Di Parma had time—just how much time he could not be sure, but enough so that he was not particularly worried, not yet. In fact, the challenge of the situation seemed to stimulate him in an oddly perverse way; it was at times like this that the game really became intriguing, when you were forced to use every bit of knowledge and strategy at your disposal in order to emerge the winner, again the winner.

  He told Di Parma what he had done inside the café, what he had found there, how it figured to give them some time and an edge to find this Lennox. He told him not to worry. He told him things were going to be just fine.

  Di Parma was not convinced. He said, “Harry, if that guy gets to the cops—”

  “He’s not going to get to the cops.”

  “We’ll never find him out there.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  Vollyer said, “We go take a look at that map we’ve got in the car.”

  Six

  The rock formation was a small, oblique confusion of wind- and sand-eroded granite, situated some two hundred yards to the south of the little-used dirt road, six and a half miles out from Cuenca Seco. At one end of the formation, a tapered flat-topped extremity pointed accusingly at the sky; in the shadow
of this, Jana finished spreading out a heavy blanket from the trunk of the TR-6 and looked out over the desert.

  In the distance, an irregular blue coloration, darker than the sky itself, appeared like a gigantic wet spot across the horizon—the reflection of the bright blue sky off the surface of a highway, the most common of all desert mirages. Except for the wavering of distant mountains in the blur of heat, movement seemed not to exist. Less than twenty feet away, a giant saguaro stood tall and majestic, like a patriarch overseeing his vast holdings, its accordion-pleated trunk dotted with holes made by Gila woodpeckers in search of insect larvae. To the left, dense stands of rabbit bush carpeted a wide swath of the desert floor in a brilliant mantle of gold; to the right, several clusters of ocotillo, their thorny stalks reminiscent of bundles of sticks tied at the bottom, grew in regulated rows, as if planted by the hand of man. There was reddish soil and bluish basalt rock and small black lava cones; there were natural bridges, arches, mounds, knobs, shapes of every description—a fairyland or a nightmare, depending on the direction of the viewer’s imagination. And to Jana’s continuing surprise, there were few totally barren patches, and no sand dunes at all.

  As she watched, a sudden flurry of activity occurred almost directly in front of her. A small dun-colored roadrunner, moving with great speed, flashed out of a clump of mesquite, raced thirty or forty yards across the rocky earth, and then struck with a slashing motion of its long sharp bill; its feathered head jerked up a moment later, a gecko lizard held firmly by the head, struggling in vain. The roadrunner carried its prey off quickly, vanishing as rapidly as it had appeared.

  Jana repressed a shudder and went to where she had parked the Triumph a few yards away. From inside, she took the handbag with her sketch pad, notebook, and writing and drawing implements—and the sack containing the food and water she had purchased in Cuenca Seco. She arranged these on the blanket and sat down in the exact center of it, Indian fashion, with the sketch pad open across her lap.