by P. N. Elrod
Venturing to the end of the trees, I found her footprints in the snow. She’d struck off in a straight line to the next patch of rough which curved to the right, leading toward the fence again. I took off after her, running flat out. It used up less of me than vanishing, and there was no track team in the world who could keep up.
Of course, bullets are faster.
I kept anticipating one catching me in the back. That’s how it started on that first night a few hours after my murder. Not knowing it was already too late, I’d run for my life, until Fred Sanderson’s shot brought me down. The shock of pain, the fall, the smell of my own blood, that first brief, barely noticed vanishing that healed me, had left an impression. The memory came back sharply now as I tore over this open stretch, slogging through snow instead of sand.
No bullet stopped me this time; I made it to the trees and called to Izzy. She couldn’t be that far. Would she follow the line toward the fence or go across the course? Somewhere there had to be a club house, some building where she could find a phone. They might be closed, but if need be she’d just let herself in with a rock.
No footprints. . .the smooth grounds were too wide here for her to risk another sprint. She had to be getting tired.
To my right, down the length of the fairway, past whatever number hole it was for golfers, men scrambled about with flashlights along the hedge and the broken part of the fence. Someone seemed to be checking on Thorp. Lights flickered among the trees in the length of rough I’d just left. They’d find our prints in another minute and come running.
Damn. I had to draw them off.
I struck out across the widest part of the unmarked snow, leaving a clear and messy trail away from the fence line. They might overlook that her prints weren’t there or think them obscured by mine. No dawdling, I pushed quickly toward another divide in the landscape, reaching it.
It was not connected to the last one, running in the opposite direction and substantially larger. They could waste plenty of time looking for us here.
I hesitated vanishing again, but there was no other way I could get back without leaving signs.
Going solid brought on a worse bout of painful lightheadedness. The home earth packed into my money belt was no help. If I wanted to do more fancy work tonight, I’d need blood.
Too bad for me that I had serious scruples about using people for food.
Too bad for these mugs that they’d backed me into a corner.
If it meant getting Izzy clear, I’d shove the scruples in a box for a few minutes, no problem.
Where the hell was she, anyway?
I trotted through the trees, keeping the bulk of them between me and the clowns milling by the hedge, I called her name, not too loudly, so she’d know to hold her fire.
Her prints were not readily visible, but I spotted part of one in a small patch of snow. That was a huge relief. I’d been worried about guessing wrong and missing her altogether. When I reached the fence, there were clear signs that she’d climbed over. I did the same, checking the ground on the other side. Pine needles, leaves, fallen branches, and other woodsy debris obscured things. The remaining snow was untouched. Where was she headed? Did she know or was she lost, too? She said that the Endicott house backed onto the golf course. Maybe she hoped to reach it or a neighboring house for help. If there were neighbors—this was one isolated piece of real estate.
The bad guys were to the right and behind me. I hoped Izzy knew to veer to the left.
I called to her again, getting no reply. She had a head start, a gun, plenty of concealing cover, and could be trusted to make the most of them. Now would be a good time to find Barrett and see if he was still alive.
But I knew his reaction to that. Whatever his situation, he’d want me to look after the lady.
No problem. I picked my way carefully and quietly, checking for tracks along the way. My night sight gave me the best advantage, but there was no point announcing my presence to a well-hidden lookout. It seemed unlikely they’d have one, but Swann’s crew had brains if Remke was any example. For a moment I really thought I’d persuaded him. Damn, if I could still whammy minds, Izzy, Barrett, and I wouldn’t even be here.
About fifty yards along, I caught the hideous stink that told me the late Mr. Endicott was somewhere upwind.
Yes. I’d been sniffing for him.
I stopped breathing and eased in that direction, taking it slow, half hoping I’d find Swann unguarded. Instead, I nearly tripped over a discarded shovel. Freezing, I listened and looked for all I was worth, but no one was nearby, and the only noise came from the direction of the golf course where bad guys still lurked.
A few yards on, in a small patch of clearing, lay the tarp and its contents, unattended.
No sign of Barrett or Kaiser.
I’d not noticed the latter joining the hunt on the golf course, and he was hard to miss, with or without a body hanging over one shoulder.
New noises suddenly intruded, but they were downwind, and I couldn’t make them out. I wanted to vanish and float in, but held off for the moment.
The closer I got, the louder things got, until they resolved into the unmistakable sounds of a fight. At least one man was breathing hard and cursing in frustration.
The trees parted for another clearing, slightly larger, but still confined. Kaiser was there—the source of the cursing—and so was Barrett. He looked ghastly, his face even whiter than before from pain and effort.
He had a four-foot length of wood as thick as a broom handle, and used it like a fencing sword instead of a club. It was the damnedest thing I’d ever seen.
Kaiser tried to grab it, and he was fast, but Barrett moved like a son of a bitch. He feinted, darted this way and that, stabbing deep when he got an opening, which must have hurt to judge by the cursing.
The end of the stick was ragged, showing wicked splinters. It was one of the shovel handles, the metal end snapped off.
Kaiser stooped and grabbed a rock, throwing like Lefty Grove on his best day. Barrett dodged the missile, slamming the stick down on Kaiser’s wrist. If that had been a real sword he’d have lost his hand, as it is, I heard the snap of bone, and Kaiser roared.
He flailed out with his other arm. Barrett danced back, cut sideways, and connected again at the elbow. No breakage, but no cursing. Kaiser was too breathless. He swiped wide, missed, and staggered backwards between two trees. It limited Barrett’s angle of attack, and then it didn’t matter. Kaiser kept backing, turned, and lumbered away at surprising speed.
The immediate threat gone, Barrett dropped to his knees and put a hand to his head.
“You look like hell,” I said, coming forward.
He didn’t flinch, though I had to be a surprise. “Where the devil have you been?” he asked. His voice was thready.
“Does it matter?” I found a drift, scooped a handful of snow, and made a fat ball. “Here, try this on your goose egg.”
He pressed the improvised icepack to his head and snarled a few strings of English idiom that I recognized as profanity only by their tone and his mood. He was entitled, having been hit hard enough to kill a normal human. He lost momentum and asked about Izzy.
“I think she’s that way,” I pointed downwind.
“Is she all right?”
“She was the last time I saw her. When did you come to?”
“Far too soon.”
“Can you walk?”
“Not fast.”
“You need blood?”
“Probably. Where’s Isabelle?”
I pointed again, suddenly worried about his memory. He let me help him up, used his improvised sword like a cane, and we got out of there with him hanging onto my arm.
He wasn’t in shape for more questions, so I gave him the short version of what had happened since he’d been clobbered. I don’t know if one word in ten got through but he didn’t tell me to shut up.
“Pelham?” he asked.
“It’s northeast of Manhattan. I t
hink. The woods are full of Swann’s men, but we’re walking away from them.” Maybe. Swann had a small army out here. They’d eventually circle back and start combing this neck of the woods. “Here’s the plan: we find Izzy, find a car, and get the hell away.”
“Whose car?”
“Anyone’s.”
“Steal it?”
“I’ll leave it at a police station when we’re done.”
“Oh, Well. All right. Please . . . slow down.”
I did so with reluctance, but he sounded bad. He was shivering. His overcoat was probably still in the nightclub’s check room next to Izzy’s. He didn’t need blood so much as a warm spot to rest until he healed enough to vanish, which would solve most of his problems.
“That was some footwork you did with the big palooka,” I said.
“Bloody ruffian,” he muttered. “They were going to bury me again. Twice in two nights is just a bit much.”
“You hear anything of interest?”
“Just some fellow ordering others to find a place to dig. Then there was an altercation and gunshots, and they scattered. It seemed best to remove myself, but that big one came back—for me, I think—and got in the way of my escape.”
“You discouraged him pretty good.”
“Not if he went to get help.”
Oh, crap.
I could hear them approaching the clearing, which was not that far behind. The wind carried their voices. I thought one might be Swann’s and fought the urge to run back and punch his face out the other side of his head.
That’s not an exaggeration. I have done that.
Then it became a moot point when the whole damned crew came out of the trees, surrounding us. They kept just outside of lunging distance.
If surrendering could buy Izzy more time to escape, then so be it. I was tired, and Barrett was in no condition to deal with bullets. I held him up with one arm, and raised the other.
Barrett’s shovel handle fell, and he abruptly got heavier, having passed out. I didn’t think he was faking and let him slip the rest of the way to the ground.
This would be a good time to vanish, come back, grab a bad guy from behind in the confusion, and ignore my scruples for a few minutes until I got enough blood to make this an unfair fight again. I was an instant away from doing it until someone waved a flashlight beam in my face, blinding me a moment.
“It’s him,” said the man with the light.
My vision cleared.
Fleish Brogan was in front of me, gun in hand. He wore that nail-chewing expression, but more of it. “You sure?”
The flashlight beam hit again, not quite reaching my eyes. “I’m sure. It’s Jack Fleming. The other man’s named Barrett.”
“Clapsaddle?” I said, suddenly recognizing the voice and not knowing what to make of it.
Desmond Clapsaddle aimed the beam toward his face. He’d added an overcoat and a silk neck scarf with fringe over his wrinkled tuxedo. With no top hat, his once slicked down hair was all over the place, giving him an air of rakish dissipation. “Guilty as charged, my lad. You owe me five dollars.”
“Like hell.”
Brogan gestured to two of his heftier men. They holstered their cannons and picked up Barrett, carrying him away.
“Hey—”
The remaining guys made the same abortive movement with their guns, reminding me that I was not in charge of the situation.
“Fleming,” said Clapsaddle, “I recall you were gifted with a halfway decent brain. Do make use of it now and cooperate. This is Fleish Brogan, by the way.”
“I know.” I addressed Brogan. “I saw you at Northside Gordy’s club in Chicago.”
He didn’t react to the name-dropping, and I couldn’t tell if it was due to not remembering or if he didn’t want to give anything away.
Clapsaddle had other things on his mind and pushed forward.
“Isabelle—where is she?”
“Gone.”
He wavered, color draining from his booze-flushed cheeks. “What do you mean?”
“I mean with any luck she’s halfway to Mount Vernon by now. She was moving fast and has a gun. I wouldn’t get in her way.”
“Great,” said Brogan, who looked ready to start gnawing railroad spikes. “Just great.”
I thought so, too.
“Where’s Swann?” he asked.
“Somewhere out here.” I gestured toward the general darkness. “I don’t know if he’s armed, but he’s got plenty of men who are.”
“What are you doing with him?”
“I’m not with him. He kidnapped me and my friends right from your club, took us to the Pendlebury Hotel, and then out here. He seems to want to set you up for a fall involving Griffin Endicott.”
Brogan reacted to my dropping of that name, his eyes blazing for an instant before he got control. “What about him?”
“The man your men carried off found a body on his property and asked for my help. I told him to go to the cops, but he’s a private type and didn’t want to do that. The body could be what’s left of Endicott, and when Swann found out, things started happening. Look, if you two have a beef going, then we don’t want any part if it.”
“But you came to my club in the first place.”
“To talk to you, not Swann. He put himself in between.”
He frowned at the surrounding trees, but couldn’t have seen much in the general darkness, then frowned at Clapsaddle, giving a reluctant nod. “All right.”
“You sure?” Clapsaddle asked.
Brogan gave no direct reply, looking to his honor guard. “Bring him.”
Two men shoved Clapsaddle out of the way, bracketed me, and we marched after Brogan.
* * * * * * *
* * * * * * *
A dozen yards to the right the woods thinned and stopped. We waded through snow, crossing a shallow drainage ditch running parallel to a paved driveway. It led to a very large house in the middle distance. I was too turned around to place where we were, only that it was downwind, and that somewhere behind was the big truck, hedge, and the mortal remains of Graft Endicott.
The two men carrying Barrett set the pace, but Brogan had a long stride and passed them, getting ahead of the parade. A couple of his boys kept up, their attention on the woods, their guns still out and ready against threats from that direction.
I looked at Clapsaddle long enough so he noticed. “So this is why you’ve been ignoring Brogan in your column,” I said. “He bought you off.”
That got me one of Clapsaddle’s withering glares. He was famous for them. “It’s not what you think. I’m here to find Isabelle, and Brogan was the fastest means to do so. By the time I got to the nightclub she was gone. He had men on watch, though, which led us to the Pendlebury and eventually here.”
“You followed the truck from the hotel?”
“No need to, Brogan grabbed one of the men on watch and persuaded him to impart a few details concerning Swann’s night out. When we learned he planned to go to Pelham, Brogan displayed a breathtaking contempt for the posted speed limits. We’ve been waiting for them.”
