Panic!

by Bill Pronzini

  But he felt responsible for her. If it had not been for him, she would be safe now, in Cuenca Seco or wherever it was that she had been staying in this area. God, he wished now that he had obeyed the transitory impulse which he had felt when he first came upon her. He had thought, then, of simply taking her car, stealing it, leaving her there to walk back to Cuenca Seco; it would have been a quicker, more positive method of escape, he had thought, than trying to find some way out of the town when she dropped him off there. If he had done that, she would be free of this; he would still be alone. But he had not wanted to hurt her in repayment for her kindness, had not wanted her safety on his conscience. And now—ironically, bitterly—her safety weighed far heavier on his mind than it would have if he had followed that original impulse.

  The wind seemed to blow colder, murmuring, and across from him Jana hugged herself. A great stillness had settled over the desert now, and her head was cocked slightly to one side, as if she were listening for the next sound. Lennox thought she looked very small and very vulnerable.

  In a voice that was cracked and brittle, like glass breaking a long way off, he said, “How are you feeling?”

  She stared at him with dull, silent hatred.

  “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry for you. I’m sorry you had to get involved in this.”

  “That’s a great deal of consolation.” The dry tremble of her own voice softened the bitterness of the words.

  “Do you think I wanted any of this?” he said. “Do you think I wanted to be a witness to a murder?”

  She looked away, at the bright face of the moon. A lone, tattered cloud drifted eerily across the lower half of it, giving it for a brief moment a whiskered, ancient appearance. After a long pause she said in what was almost a whisper, “I’m afraid.”

  “I know,” Lennox said. “I know.”

  “And thirsty. I’ve never been this thirsty in my life.”

  “Don’t think about it. It only makes it worse if you think about it.”

  “What are we going to do?” softly, plaintively. “How long can we keep running away from them?”

  “As long as we have to.”

  “I don’t know how much further I can go.”

  “You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  “Will I? Will the thirst and the fear be gone then?”

  “I’m sorry,” Lennox said again.

  “You’re sorry, oh God, you’re sorry.”

  She sat rigidly, her face in profile and soft in the moonlight. Lennox felt strangely drawn to her in that moment, to this woman about whom he knew nothing but to whom he was bonded by a bitter quirk of fate. Since his discovery of the kind of cold and calculating bitch Phyllis was, he had mistrusted women; except for a plump divorcée he had picked up in a bar outside of Reno, and a waitress in a hash joint he had worked in Utah—two biologically initiated liaisons which had left him depressed and unfulfilled on both occasions—he had had little to do with them since the night he had begun running in earnest. But it was not a physical thing, this attraction he felt for the girl named Jana Hennessey. It was, instead, an innate recognition deep within himself that their common bond was far more basic than the immediacy of their plight, that they shared a kind of kinship; he saw something of himself in her, something dark and lonely and empty, and he could not explain what it was.

  Impulsively he said, “Tell me about yourself, Jana.”

  Her head moved slowly until she was facing him again. “Why?”

  “I’d like to know.”

  “What difference does it make, now?”

  “You come from New York, don’t you?” he said.

  She did not answer.

  “Jana?”

  “Yes, I come from New York,” she said wearily.

  “What do you do there?”

  “I write books.”

  “What kind of books?”

  “Children’s books.”

  “Is that why you’re out here?”

  “I ... yes. Yes.”

  “What were you doing all alone today? Research?”

  “I was making some sketches.”

  “You do your own illustrating?”

  “Yes.”

  “It must be a fine thing to have artistic talents.”

  “It’s a lot of hard work.”

  “Where do you live in New York? Greenwich Village?”

  “I don’t live in New York any more.”

  “Well, where do you live? Out here? This state, I mean?”

  “Oh God,” she said, “what difference does it make? We’re going to die on this desert, you know that, don’t you?”

  “We’re not going to die,” Lennox said.

  “How are we going to get away?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll get away.”

  “No,” she said, “no, we won’t.”

  He had a sudden thought, and hope touched him faintly, clinging. “Are you living here? Or are you just staying in the area—with friends, maybe?”

  “In a hotel,” Jana answered. “Why?”

  “In Cuenca Seco?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does anyone know you came out here today?”

  She frowned. “The desk clerk. He showed me how to get here on a map.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did the clerk seem interested in you?”

  “His eyes were all over me, if that’s what you mean. What are you getting at?”

  “I was thinking that when you didn’t come back tonight, he might have gone to the police and reported you missing. And that they might send out some men to look for you.”

  “Why should he go to the police if I don’t come back right away? He’d be a fool to do that.”

  “It’s a chance, that’s all.”

  “Is it the only chance we have?”

  “No. No, not the only one.”

  “What will we do when we leave here? Keep running the way we did today?”

  “I don’t know. I’m trying to think what to do.”

  The wind whistled in a gentle monotone between the rocks and stroked Jana with chill intimacy; she hugged herself again, shivering. “God, it’s cold. I had no idea it got this cold on the desert at night.”

  Lennox watched her rocking slightly and he felt very sorry for her. He crawled stiffly across to her, raised himself up on his knees. “We’d better huddle together for warmth,” he said softly, and put a tentative arm about her shoulders. “If we don‘t—”

  She pulled away from him viciously, pushing him off balance, so that he fell on his right elbow. Her eyes, in the moonshine, were wide, flickering pools. “Don’t touch me!” she said. “Damn you, don’t you touch me!”

  He stared at her. “I was only thinking—”

  “I don’t care what you were thinking.”

  “For God’s sake,” Lennox said, “I only wanted to make it a little easier for you, for both of us.”

  “Leave me alone, just leave me alone.”

  “You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

  “Just keep your hands off me, that’s all. I don’t like to be touched. I don’t want you to touch me.”

  “All right.”

  “All right.”

  She lay down in the sand, facing toward him but not looking at him, her body pulled into a fetal position, her arms folded tautly over her breasts. He stared at her for a long time, but she did not move and her eyes did not close; finally he rolled onto his back and covered his own eyes with his arm, shielding out the moonlight, embracing the darkness.

  What’s the matter with her? he thought. I only wanted to make her warm.

  And then he thought: I wonder if I can sleep?

  And slept.

  The Third Day...

  One

  It had been this way for Brackeen in San Francisco:

  A patrolman with an impressive record in his four years on the force, one soft step from a promotion to plain clothes and an inspect
orship, he had been teamed with another good, young officer, Bob Coretti. Their cruise beat was the Potrero District, and the industrial and waterfront area extending from China Basin to Hunters Point; it was not the safest or the cleanest patrol in the city, but they knew it well and they functioned well in its jungle of streets and alleys and dark old buildings. They were known, even respected, as tough but decent heat—and as a result they had even built up a small but dependable stable of informants who would put them on to minor rumbles for a few dollars’ cash.

  It was one of these tipsters, a pool hustler named Scully, who gave them the line on Feldman.

  They were cruising on South Van Ness, a few minutes before ten of a bleak Thursday in early February. It had been a quiet night, like you can get in early winter, the sky filled with a biting wind and a thin rain; the heater in their patrol car was not working, and Coretti, who was driving, had been complaining about the fact for the past hour. He was telling Brackeen that he was tempted to fix the damned thing himself and send the city a bill for repair costs, when Scully came out of one of the bars along the strip and gave them the high sign.

  They met him ten minutes later, in a deserted parking lot, and he told them what the grapevine had. According to the rap, he said, this Feldman was a parlor collector for a string of books in Southern California, who had lost the battle with the obvious temptation. Scully didn’t know exactly how much he’d gotten away with, but since the betting had been unusually heavy at Caliente on Saturday, his guess was five figures. The tip was that Feldman had come into San Francisco, and was grounding in a tenement hotel—room 306—a couple of blocks off Third, near Hunters Point.

  Brackeen gave Scully ten bucks, and then he and Coretti went to check it out. They didn’t say much on the ride over, nor did they radio in to Dispatch their destination and mission, as they should have done. They were tense and excited; both of them knew that taking this Feldman might be the lever they needed to get out of a patrol car and into the General Works Detail at the Hall of Justice. They did not want to share this one—not until they had Feldman in custody. Neither of them even considered the possibility that they might not be able to handle it.

  The hotel Scully had named stood between a storage warehouse for one of the interstate truck lines and an iron foundry, midway on the block; it was a three-story wooden affair, well over half a century old, cancerous and dying and yet clinging to its last few years with a kind of bitter tenacity. A narrow alley separated it from the iron foundry on the right. Inside, the sparse lobby contained the strong musty smell of age—the smell of death wrapped in mothballs—and little else; there was no one behind the short desk paralleling the wall on the right.

  Brackeen said, “No use making announcements. We’ll do this nice and slow and quiet.”

  Coretti nodded, and they went across to a set of bare wood stairs and climbed carefully and soundlessly to the third floor. They stopped in front of 306, and without speaking, moved one on either side of the door, drawing their service revolvers. When they were set, Brackeen reached out with the barrel of his gun and rapped sharply on the door panel.

  Momentary silence. And then a faint creaking of bedsprings. The only sound in the hallway was their quiet breathing. Brackeen knocked on the door again, and again there was silence. They looked at one another, and Coretti shrugged and Brackeen moved away from the wall, stepped back to get leverage, and then slammed his foot against the thin wood just above the knob. The lock held. He drove his foot forward a second time, viciously, and the lock pulled from the jamb with a protesting screech of rusted metal and the door kicked inward heavily. Feldman was at the far window, one leg over the sill, and he had a tan pasteboard suitcase in his left hand and a big Colt automatic clenched in his right. He froze momentarily as the door gave; then his arm lifted and the gun jumped once, twice, three times, billowing flame.

  Brackeen was the first into the room, and he threw himself to the floor as Feldman fired, landing on his right shoulder and spoiling the shot he had. Coretti was half in and half out of the open doorway, a clear target, but Feldman’s shot was wild, showering plaster dust from high in the wall above the open door. Coretti ducked back into the hallway.

  Brackeen gained his knees, brought his service revolver up and on the window—but by then Feldman was just a dim shadow seen through the pelting rain on the fire escape outside. He snapped a quick shot that shattered the window glass, and shards fell and broke on the sill and floor with a sound like the ringing of tiny discordant bells; the bullet whined off into the night and he thought he could hear Feldman’s heavy shoes retreating on the iron rungs of the fire escape.

  He turned to yell to Coretti to get downstairs, to block the alley, but Coretti had thought of that already; he was pounding down the stairs at the end of the hall. Adrenalin flowed through Brackeen in a hot, thick rush and he turned back to the window. They couldn’t let Feldman get away, not this one, not the big feather that was going to get him the promotion he’d worked for so long and so hard. Without thinking further, moving on reflex, he ran to the window, threw one leg over the sill, and started out onto the fire escape.

  Feldman was standing there, on the second rung down, and the bore of the automatic in his hand was centered on Brackeen’s face.

  He couldn’t move. The unexpectedness, the shock of it, petrified him, and in that single instant Feldman—thin face white, frightened, homicidal—squeezed the trigger. The sound of the hammer falling was a deafening explosion in Brackeen’s ears and he thought Oh God, I’m going to die, I’m dead and the sudden fear was like a wiggling, slime-cold thing in his groin and his rectum and his belly, penetrating to the very core of him, touching the soul of him, and a scream that had no voice echoed through every cell and nerve-ending in his body. He looked at death, seemed to look beyond it to a terrible darkness, and his horror was pure and primeval. The second explosion, the ultimate explosion, was monstrously loud and he felt the bullet tear into his face, shattering bones, spurting blood, ending his life, ending the world.

  And yet, it was all in his mind.

  The explosion, the pain, was illusion. The automatic jammed, miraculously it jammed, and there was only the rain and the great mushrooming sound inside Brackeen’s head. Feldman looked at the gun in disbelief, and then he turned and fled down the slippery metal steps, almost falling, not looking back.

  It was not until then that Brackeen realized he was still alive.

  The realization came slowly, and at first he refused to believe it. I’m dead, he thought, and felt the cold rain on his face and a sliver of glass cutting into his thigh, sending faint signals of pain from his clouded mind. I’m dead, and his eyes cleared and he could see Feldman reach the bottom of the fire escape—one of those old-fashioned ones that ended flush with the pavement—and start running wildly across the slick alley floor. I’m dead, I have to stop him, two confused and conflicting thoughts, and he tried to raise the gun in his right hand. He had no strength. He felt incredibly weak, worse than he had as a kid after a bout with double pneumonia, but he was alive—accepting it now, the miracle of it—he was alive; and the trembling started. He straddled the window sill, shaking like a malaria victim, and through dulled eyes he saw Feldman disappear into the solid darkness between the hotel and the iron foundry at the alley mouth.

  A moment later there was the sound of a shot. And then silence. And then another shot. The rain drummed hollowly on the metal of the fire escape, and the wind hurled itself against the walls of the narrow canyon like a caged thing. Somewhere in the building, a woman shouted querulously. A long way off, the moan of a siren punctured the wet blackness of the night.

  Brackeen sat there for what seemed like an eternity before he was able to move again. When he stood up finally on the iron-slatted platform, the weakness buckled his knees and he nearly fell, bracing himself against the cold wood of the hotel wall. Going down, he held onto the railing with both hands, the service revolver back in his holster although he did n
ot remember putting it there. He reached the alley below and walked toward the gray-black of its mouth; his gait was shuffling, awkward, like one of the wet-brains he had seen on Skid Row. When he reached the street, he saw that several people in various stages of undress were huddled around something on the sidewalk, murmuring and fluttering like sparrows. He went there and looked down.

  It was Coretti, and he was dead.

  He had been shot in the face.

  Brackeen turned away and stumbled back into the alley and puked in the rain until there was nothing left, until another patrol car arrived on the scene. He was better then, and the trembling, though still noticeable, was less violent; the homicide inspectors who came a few minutes later attributed it to nervous reaction and simple shock. Brackeen did not tell them what had happened on the fire escape. He did not tell them how, in a sense, he was responsible for Coretti’s death. He made his report and he let them take him back to the Potrero precinct to change and then he went home and stayed there for three days, thinking about what had happened, examining it, and each time he relived the scene—saw the black hole of the automatic staring at him, death staring at him—he broke out in a cold sweat and began trembling and felt the fear squeezing painfully at his genitals. He took out his gun two dozen times in those three days and held it in his hands two dozen times, and two dozen times he had to put it away because the sight of it, the feel of it, made him sick to his stomach. And when he slept, he dreamed of a scythe blade descending and fleshless fingers beckoning and Coretti pointing at him, saying his name again and again through the gaping, bleeding hole in what had once been his face ...

  Brackeen went back on duty the fourth day—the day Feldman tried to shoot it out with a team of detectives from the Fresno force and died with nine bullets in his head and torso and a .32 Iver-Johnson back-up gun in his pocket, which a later ballistics report proved was the weapon that had killed Coretti. But it was no good. He could not face his fellow workers any more than he had been able to face himself, despite their sympathy or perhaps because of it. He stuck it out for two weeks, and at the end of that time he knew he was finished as an efficient big-city cop, knew that he would never again be able to face a gun—perhaps not even to use one in any kind of tight situation—without the shaking and the sweating and the petrifying fear. He was a coward, deep down where a man lived he was rancid jelly, and Coretti’s death was a crushing weight on him; he could not take the chance of crapping out in some future crisis, and possibly having the blood of another good cop on his hands and on his soul. He loved police work, he had been born to it; but knowing what he now knew about himself, he simply could not continue.