by P. N. Elrod
“Gonna be one of those nights again?” I asked, not without some sympathy.
“Possibly. God knows I tire myself out, but my dark sleep is often elusive.”
“Your what?”
“My dark sleep, the true sleep, the absolute rest that comes when one is completely unconscious and dreamless. Most nights I don’t really fall off the edge into it. I merely doze. Some part of me is still stubbornly awake and aware. Hours and hours of it until morning comes.”
“I’ve had nights like that. The ones where you just drift and sort of dream?”
“Yes, unfortunately. Does that still happen for you?”
“Only if I’m caught away from my home earth.” When that happened, the dreams weren’t nice, either. In fact, they were usually pretty hellish, so I took care never to get caught out.
“Perhaps I should send off to London for some earth and see if it might make a difference,” he mused.
“Worth a try,” I said with a snort. “Why don’t you take a sleeping pill?”
“I used to, but they stopped working for me. I had to take more than was safe to have any effect, and they made me so sluggish I could barely get out of bed the next day.”
He rarely opened up like this. His profile under the passing street lamps was hard to read, but he seemed sober enough, nowhere near the Shakespeare-quoting stage. “When was that?”
A pause before answering. “A long time ago. A different life.”
“Back when you were acting?”
“Yes, back then.”
His tone was light, but with that vague reply I knew I wouldn’t be getting any more from him on the subject. He usually clammed up about anything to do with his early life, only occasionally telling an amusing story about his acting career with a traveling stock company in Canada. He said he’d left them to turn private agent because it allowed him to eat regularly. I always had the feeling there was more to it than that. Coldfield once hinted I was right, but said it was up to Escott to tell me when he was ready.
Bobbi woke when we stopped, and I walked her in and up to her suite. Escott had said to take what time I needed, lighting his pipe for something to do. Given the circumstances, none of it took long. I was still light-headed, an aftereffect of the Mickey, and though triumphant, Bobbi was bone-tired.
The blue dress wasn’t nearly as complicated to get off her as the red one. She draped it carefully over a chair. Looking at her naked body as she turned made me sorry things had turned out the way they had, but it was never as good when she was too sleepy to respond to what I was doing. I needed to know she was enjoying things, too.
Tucking her in bed with a kiss would have to do for tonight. She was asleep before I left the room.
Between condensation and the pipe smoke, the inside of the car seemed to have its own private fog bank. Escott had taken on a distracted mood, which I was used to, meaning he was working on some inner problem. I hoped it had to do with the Sommerfeld case, but didn’t interrupt to ask. He drove the nearly empty wee-hour streets without a word, probably without knowing what he was doing. When he got like this his body worked like the automatic pilot of an airplane.
As we approached the office I ventured to put in a request that he drop me at the Stockyards. I hadn’t had time the night before to feed, and was really starting to feel the hunger. He nodded and made the right turns, then parked and cut the motor, again telling me to take my time. I shed my pale gray topcoat and the tuxedo jacket, unwilling to put them at risk with the cattle. It was cold out, but that wasn’t anything I worried much about anymore.
My trip in was quick and the cattle blood satisfying as always, taking care of any lingering trace of my hypnosis-induced headache. Fully alert and refreshed, I hurtled back to the car, materializing in the passenger seat. Escott was still puffing on the pipe and hardly reacted.
“You know audiences would pay good money to see something like that,” I said.
“Indeed, but can you juggle?” He started up, put the car in gear, and got us to the office, parking a few steps down from the stairwell opening.
“What do you want here?”
“Just to look into a few things in the files. It won’t take long.”
“Gil Dalhauser?”
“Among others, then we can make a check on Mr. McCallen’s place.”
I was interested enough to want to look into a few things for myself. It beat sitting in the car watching the signals change. I followed him up the stairs. He unlocked and walked in. The light was on, but he always left it that way. It discouraged intruders, and at night he wisely preferred entering a well-lit room.
Close behind, I almost bumped into him on the threshold, he stopped so abruptly. Looking past, I saw what had put him on guard: cigarette butts in the desk ashtray—he always emptied it before leaving—and a file-cabinet drawer not quite closed. Those were locked tight each night without fail.
“I shan’t be but a minute, Jack,” he said in an unworried, conversational voice. “I think I left it in the desk.”
He crossed the room, his steps on the wood floor making too much noise for me to hear if anyone else was still present. From his actions he’d assumed we had company, which was a prudent thing to do until proved otherwise. He put the pipe down and reached toward a drawer that contained a loaded revolver. I started forward to do an invisible check of the inner room. Neither of us achieved our goals. The other door was hauled open before I could vanish.
Jason McCallen emerged, holding a little revolver in his big fist. It was a .22, and I had the idea that it may have come from Mary Sommerfeld’s house. He’d probably paid her place another visit despite her new locks.
He swung the muzzle first on Escott, who halted in mid-movement, his arms slightly raised, then to me. I gingerly finished walking in, stepping away from the door and leaving it wide. McCallen’s dark eyes were hard and his posture tense. When a man looks that nervous it’s best to give him a clear path out.
“What the devil do you think you’re doing here, man?” Escott demanded. I winced.
The gun came back toward him. “I’m trying to find where you two took her.”
“By breaking into my file cabinets? The ones here are only for old records. Current cases are stored elsewhere. You’d have had better luck if you’d simply made an appointment.” Escott put his arms down.
McCallen looked baffled a moment, but recovered, scowling. He didn’t brandish the gun around, giving me to think he knew how to shoot. “Don’t try me, mister. You know where she is and you’ll be telling me or I’ll use this.”
“To maim or murder?” For all the fear Escott showed, McCallen could have been threatening him with a flyswatter.
“You just take your pick.” McCallen fired once, snapping a shot about five inches left of Escott’s skull. The balloon-pop explosion was loud inside the confines of the little room. Escott didn’t move, but I flinched and surged forward. McCallen aimed at me again. “Don’t tempt me, laddie.”
Like he had all the time in the world, Escott turned to inspect the small, eye-level hole by the window in disgust. “Well, there’s another damned repair job for me.”
“Charles,” I said warningly.
His mouth twitched as he glanced at me, his gray eyes dancing with inner excitement. He was enjoying himself, for Christ’s sake.
I put my full attention on McCallen, moving to draw his gaze. “I want you to listen to me.”
“You’ll be the one to do the listening,” he said, sighting down the short barrel at my nose.
I’m fairly bulletproof, and therefore should have been the calm one here, but having been shot too many times, I was understandably gun-shy. It took concentration to get anyone hypnotized, and that little muzzle pointed my way was a hell of a distraction.
Escott made a small warning gesture for me to hold off. “Now, Mr. McCallen, I’m willing to be reasonable about this. You will please put your firearm away, sit down, and talk with me like a civilized man.”
“So you can try to flimflam me with more insulting money offers? Not on your life—and that’s what it’ll be if you don’t tell me where she is.”
“You’re an intelligent fellow, Mr. McCallen. Were our positions reversed, would you betray her to a madman with a gun? Is that your plan? To find her and kill her?”
McCallen made a kind of outraged choking sound. “All I want is what’s rightfully mine. You’re the bastards that broke into my house and took it away.”
“I confess we did bend the law a bit—”
“Bend!”
“But from what we’ve been told it was in a good cause.”
“The woman’s a daft spoiled brat and she’ll ruin it.”
“Ruin what, exactly?”
“My chance of a lifetime to—”
“Jason! Jason!”
From the stairs came the sound of several men galloping noisily up, shouting in fear. McCallen’s oddball cronies from the bar crowded into the room, with Paterno leading the way. He stopped and gaped at the tableau.
“What the hell are you doing?” he bellowed at McCallen. “We heard a shot—”
“I’m trying to get this damned fool to talk. Now stand out of the way so I can get on with it.”
Paterno was all wide-eyed shock and nerves. “You’re out of your mind! You don’t just shoot people for something like this.”
“You want the goods, don’t you?”
“Not like this! Put that thing away and let’s go before someone calls the cops.”
“But he knows where Mary is!”
“She’ll turn up sooner or later. You might as well face it, it’s over with her.”
“She’s probably hiding out with that toad of a prince. Is that it?” Eyes glittering, he turned the gun on Escott again. “Where is she?”
Paterno must not have been thinking clearly, for he rushed forward and grabbed at the gun. Everyone else froze, various expressions of horror on their faces. Paterno and McCallen struggled back and forth, cursing. I caught Escott’s coat sleeve and yanked him over and hopefully out of the line of fire. The gun muzzle went every which way in the scuffle.
Then it resolved to unexpected quiet. Paterno managed to get both hands on McCallen’s gun arm and push it down against the desk. McCallen stopped fighting him. Both glared at each other, breathing hard for several moments. With a snarl, McCallen shook him off. He didn’t put the gun away, but he wasn’t pointing it at anyone.
“Come on then, y’pack of louts,” he growled, then shouldered his way past them all to stump down the stairs. They looked a lot cowed by what they’d seen, but followed.
Paterno straightened his rumpled coat with shaky dignity and grimaced at me and Escott. “Gentlemen, I apologize for this. Jason’s been under a lot of strain lately.”
“So it would appear, sir,” said Escott. “Thank you for your intervention.”
“I’ll try to talk some sense into him about Mary.”
“Please do—Mr. Paterno, is it?”
His mouth popped open. “How do you know my name?”
“It is my trade. Perhaps you will be so kind as to tell me—”
Paterno shook his head and darted for the door. “Some other time, sorry. Gotta go.”
Escott made no move to stop him, so I didn’t either. We watched his hasty exit, then I closed up after him.
“You okay?” I asked in the abrupt silence.
“Quite fit, thank you.”
“What were you thinking, arguing with the man? He could have killed you!”
“But he didn’t.”
I could have gone through all the stages of exasperation and anger with him and yelled till I turned blue, but we’d been through it before, and he wasn’t going to change. For an instant I very seriously considered hypnotizing him to make him behave with more caution, or at least apologize for being such an idiot, but gave up the notion. It was too much against his nature.
“I’m getting some air,” I said, and went out, not slamming the door too hard.
It was a figurative excuse, since I no longer breathed regularly, but I had to be clear of that office and away from Escott until I calmed down. Muttering a lot about things I couldn’t help, I took a swift turn around the block, consciously pumping my dormant lungs to flush them clean and work off the adrenaline. Hatless and coatless, I didn’t feel the cold, only noted that the wind had altered direction from the Stockyards so the stink was gone.
McCallen, Paterno, and company were also gone. They had to have parked out of sight of the office, but not out of earshot while McCallen was doing his Burglar Bill routine. Everything seemed normal now. I made another circle, just to be sure. The cars in the immediate area of the block were familiar, the others I wasn’t so sure about, but I felt marginally better for the exercise. I could return and not be tempted to give Escott a punch in the nose for his own good.
“What’s the damage?” I asked him when I walked in again.
He was at the desk with a spread of papers in front of him, puffing heartily on his pipe. “Minimal. Our Mr. McCallen must have some lock-picking skills, for that is how he had to have effected his entry to both the office and the files. He’d gone through all the ones under S, but of course did not find anything on the case. My current notes are in the usual spot, safe and sound.”
He’d built a trick medicine cabinet in the washroom that swung out to reveal a hiding place in the wall. “Is that the file he wanted?” I nodded at the desk.
“Dear me, no. I was just refreshing my memory about Mr. Dalhauser and that other fellow, LaCelle. Not much on the latter, I fear, nothing further than ten years back. Do you think you could find out a bit more from Gordy? I tried to have a chat with him but his mind was rather focused on the charming Miss Taylor tonight.”
“Did you get to meet her?”
“Briefly. I recalled enjoying her performance as Titania when one of the local stations undertook to do a version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Very sprightly she was, though I thought she’d be taller.”
“Why do you want to know about LaCelle?”
“Knowledge is power. Perhaps you could also inquire about Grant, too.”
“Still think you know him?”
“I’m not sure. I’m quite good at faces, and his is not familiar to me, yet there’s something about him . . . well, there’s nothing for it tonight. I’ll look into things tomorrow. Now about concluding things with Mr. McCallen . . . ”
Despite the cooling-down walk, I still had to bite my tongue at the mention of that lunatic. The only one loonier was my partner. “After I drop you home I’ll go look him up. If he goes back to his house, he’s not going to be a problem anymore.”
“Excellent. But I’d like you to find out exactly what is in Miss Sommerfeld’s mysterious envelope. I should have had a look before when you got it back, but she was so adamant about her privacy I chose to respect her confidence. Not an error I plan to repeat, but who knew then that it would become such a nuisance?”
“Tell her it might help speed finishing the case.”
“That could work. I’ll also ask if she knows this Paterno chap. Right, then. I’ve got all I need for the time being. I should like to go home and study this over some hot brandy.” He squinted through the pipe smoke at my shirtsleeves. “Aren’t you just a bit chilly?”
“Gimme the keys, I’ll go warm the car up.”
“I doubt that it’s had time to cool, but here, and thank you.” He tossed me the ring and began shuffling his papers together.
The Nash was still warm, but I had it idling smooth, and the air coming from the heater was nice and hot. He’d have a comfortable ride home. It’d only take Escott a minute to lock the office, for all the good it seemed to do. I turned the headlights on so he could see better, and far down the street another car’s lights also bloomed.
I was still rattled about McCallen, but didn’t think he’d have ditched his friends for a return bout so fast. The possibility exist
ed, though. I leaned across the seat and opened the passenger door, calling to Escott to get a move on. From the top of the stairs he said something in reply, but I couldn’t catch it; the wind brought only the sound of itself and the fast-approaching car.
Bad. I didn’t like the feel of this at all. Scrambling out, I hurried toward the stairwell opening just as Escott emerged onto the sidewalk. I yelled at him to duck, to get out of sight.
He saw the car coming. It was still distant enough not to be a threat; he had time to move but did not. He must have been trying to get a look at the driver. Impossible in the dark.
I called out again.
Then I heard a loud, sharp crack off to my left, and realized my mistake. The threat was not from the car, but from across the street. A man came out from the deep shadow of a doorway, arm extended and pointing at Escott. The wind caught a tiny puff of smoke from the gun in his hand and carried it away.
Escott made a fast, abortive move toward the protection of the Nash, but not fast enough.
The gun made a bright flash—several bright flashes—of fire and smoke. The vicious noise of the shots bounced off the surrounding buildings.
Five shots. Very quick.
Two caught Escott square in the chest.
I saw it so clear it was like a still picture of the instant.
He jerked and made a strange, breathy grunt, then dropped straight down like his knees had been cut from under him.
11
BRAKES squealed as the car came to a rolling stop between me and the gunman. He ducked and dove inside, his form hidden by the bulk of the vehicle. The driver hit the gas and gears and hurled off, taking the first corner on two screeching wheels.
Escott sprawled facedown on the sidewalk. Very still.
Not fair. It’s just not fair.
The thought rolled over and over in my mind, blocking out everything else. I could not see for a moment; gray mist enveloped me. When it cleared I was kneeling by him with no memory of how I’d gotten there. I just couldn’t take it in, only feel an overwhelming black sickness washing over me like a wave of icy lake water.
