Dead-Bang

by Richard S. Prather

  It was like a chorus of Rockettes employing only their heads, a movement as precise as a military maneuver, a sight as flabbergasting as seeing four thousand fans watching an ace in a tennis match—for which, I recalled thinking long ago, I was dressed—played on the side of an Alp.

  Strike the Rockettes and tennis, stick with the military maneuver. For this was an army, an army of Christians, and all those “soldiers armed with love” were looking at me again, and—to me, at least, without a blindfold but standing with my back against the bloody wall—they had eight thousand guns for eyes.

  They had gunned me before, but this time was different. Because I could feel it now, could literally feel the force of whatever flowed from those eight thousand eyes, and no one while I live will ever make me believe I did not feel it. I felt it like uncountable tiny blows, like the beating of thousands of soft black wings.…

  I had a sudden apprehension: These fruitcakes were only a cackle away from killing me. It was not a logical, carefully analyzed conclusion. It was a message straight from the seat of my pants. And it didn’t matter whether the conclusion was true or false, I knew what I felt, and I felt like a lone winter nut in the presence of four thousand squirrels.

  Well, I hadn’t been able to go up the aisle and out. Maybe I could back down it. Maybe not, but it was worth a try, so I tried it. Nobody leaped upon me, though there was much gunning with squinted eyes, mumbling, and undoubtedly a variety of sinister imprecations and curses—even though Festus Lemming was speaking again.

  Speaking in the same varicose vein, but it need not be repeated or even commented upon except to say that it got worse. One would think it could not get worse. One would be wrong. That Sainted man had depths of depravity in him even I had only begun to suspect. He was going on once more—I swear it’s true—about fornicators and whoremongers as I drew abreast, if while backing up you can draw abreast, of the front row of backless wooden benches.

  I should have been feeling more confident of escape, having made it clear to the foot of the aisle, but instead uneasiness was growing in me. Because Festus, after talking about fornicators and whoremongers in general—to their great detriment, needless to say—had switched from the general to the specific. Need I mention who was the specific?

  The hell of it was, the man didn’t come right out and lie about me, he just took the truth and diddled with it until it died. I will admit I’ve got some faults. I will even admit I’ve got lots and lots of faults. And that I like girls and that sort of thing. And that I have—Yes!—even fornicated, on occasion. Oh, hell—lots and lots of occasions. But Festus Lemming made it sound awful.

  By the time he got through with me I was a vile excrescence from the scum of hell, perhaps only a minor fiend but one allied with the Powers of Darkness and moved by the lusts and lecheries of Satan—these were his words—a man who had committed murders most foul, who banged hoods in their heads and female persons elsewhere. These last were not his words, but I would blush to quote in their entirety his severe condemnation, of “the hairy thighs of lust” and “sweet and undefiled nakedness” and even “innocence and purity ravished and slain by”—well, slain by the slobbering ape-man, let’s say, and I do not blush easily.

  But by that time I was back there in the dimness beyond the pearly-gray curtains. Looking very nervously for a way out, a way which did not require that I walk up the church aisle. To some this may, even now, seem a needless thing for me to have done. After all, what real harm could come to me in church? What, indeed? Everybody knows most good Christians are chock-full of goodness, compassion, charity, and sweetness. And that all these people were good Christians could not be denied. Nor could it be denied that, to them, I was an infidel.

  So I looked like crazy for another way out, and back in the corner I found a small, narrow, rather flimsy door, and opened it, and quick as a wink slipped through the narrow opening into the outside world. Which, strangely, seemed narrower.

  In my expensive Cadillac—which would never get to heaven—I started the ignition and, as the engine idled, took a quick look at Emmanuel Bruno’s note to Drusilla. Sure enough; plain as plain could be. I had known where to find him ever since my own little illumination at the conclusion of the Lemmings’ Sing-A-Long, which had been, though it was difficult to believe, just a tick or two more than five minutes ago. From the time I entered the Church of the Second Coming until this moment, with the Cad’s engine idling in the parking lot, only half an hour had elapsed. It was not yet quite ten-thirty on the night of the fourteenth of August.

  I thought briefly about the elasticity of time, but as I put the Cad into gear and stepped on the gas, I considered something equally fascinating—to me, at least. That was the curious way in which, often, my cases begin, or appear to begin, as matters mundane and routine, then zowie become something else. That’s not always true, but it could not be questioned that this time it was truer than ever before.

  Because this one had begun, simply enough, with a girl calling upon Shell Scott, private eye, because she wanted him to look for her daddy. But now?

  Now a fiend allied with the Powers of Darkness flew through the night to find and rescue the Antichrist.

  And he was pretty damned sure he could do it, too.

  7

  I parked near the corner, walked to Fifty-eighth Street, and turned right, kept going for a block and a half until I reached the place I wanted. It was a Spanish-style house constructed of what was probably blocks of compressed sawdust or a new coal tar derivative, but it appeared to be made of adobe bricks with white mortar squeezed out between them like toothpaste between loose beige teeth.

  I checked the number—1521—and walked on past. The house looked empty; no lights showed. A minute later I approached it again, but through the next-door neighbor’s back yard, walking very quietly with the .38 Special in my hand. The house wasn’t empty; at least light glowed softly from two windows back here. The drapes inside were drawn, but those over the window to my right, nearer the wall, sagged half an inch apart just above the sill. By bending and peering through, and moving my head back and forth, I could examine a small slice of the room’s interior.

  And in that small slice I saw a man sitting in a wooden chair, his arms pulled behind him, obviously bound; but I couldn’t see his wrists or whatever held them. He sat erect, unmoving, his profile toward me, looking to my left, and I could see the band of white tape over his mouth. The one eye visible to me was open but puffed, becoming discolored. Somebody had landed a pretty good one on him.

  I had never met Emmanuel Bruno, but his face was familiar to me from newspaper and magazine photos and television. He was six-five, three inches taller than I am, lean, rangy, with a massive head and features that would not have been out of place on a Roman coin, the lips a bit full—some might have described them as sensual or even Satanic—and usually twisted in a smile.

  I couldn’t see much, maybe, but it was enough to know this guy was not Emmanuel Bruno.

  I squeezed my eyes shut briefly, shook my head. For a crazy moment I wondered if I had really been talking to Drusilla Bruno earlier. She’d said that was her name, and I’d taken her word for it. Why not? What reason would she—I cut off that train of thought. It didn’t make sense. She hadn’t told me where to go, but I was sure this was the right house. Besides, you do not just happen to stumble upon homes in which guys who have been socked in the eye are bound to chairs.

  By moving a little to my right I managed a glimpse of one of the room’s corners—and a bit of the floor, reddish or pink, and shiny, as if covered with bright new linoleum. But I didn’t spot anybody else. I heard someone, though. The scrape of a chair, a couple of muttered, unintelligible words. Then there was the thud of footsteps and the figure of a man appeared between the guy in the chair and me.

  I couldn’t see his face, but he was stocky, thick in the middle, wearing dark trousers—with the checked butt of an automatic pistol showing above the belt—and a pale blue d
ress shirt with French cuffs, visible because he had both hands on his hips, elbows akimbo. After half a minute the man stepped—oddly, I thought—to my left and out of sight. I heard him open a door, his footsteps getting softer, but in seconds they were louder again. The door slammed and the man came briefly into view peeling cellophane from a pack of cigarettes, still moving with that peculiar, almost mincing, gait. There was a scraping sound once more, then silence.

  I waited another minute or two but heard no further sounds. The guy in the chair continued to sit erect, motionless except for the blinking of his puffy eye. And as I looked at him I knew I’d seen that face, that profile, somewhere. It had struck me as familiar with my first glimpse of him, but the fact that it wasn’t Bruno’s face pushed recognition from my mind for a while.

  It was a familiar face, yes, familiar from newspaper pix and a couple of television newscasts; but not by any means as instantly recognizable as Bruno’s, and almost surely, if I had not been thinking of Bruno, I would have been unable to remember who the man was. But my thoughts sort of bounced around—Bruno … Lemming … Erovite … Cassiday and Quince … C and Q Pharmaceuticals—Cassiday.

  Dave Cassiday. I recalled Dru also mentioning something about, “Before he left, Dad tried to phone Dave, but wasn’t able to reach him.” Maybe there was one angle that made sense of this. But I knew two things for sure: I wasn’t going to see much more through my peephole; and I was going into that room. It was not one of the most cheerful conclusions I’ve ever come to.

  Half a dozen feet beyond the other window, farther to my left, was a door, closed and—when I gingerly tried it—locked. But flimsy enough. Probably. Just a flimsy little door, like back doors usually are. I guessed there was a hallway beyond it, into which the stocky man had stepped upon leaving the room. He’d gone in and out quickly, slamming the door behind him, so almost surely that door was unlocked.

  There was no way I could get into the room without making a little noise, and a little would be too much, so I decided to make a lot. I shoved the Colt into its holster, bent and took off my shoes, straightened up with one gripped in each hand. I sucked in a couple of deep breaths, then took two quick driving steps forward and slammed my shoulder into the door I hoped was flimsy enough.

  It was. The wood splintered and the lock tore from the frame, the door sprang open and smacked the far wall.

  By then I was jumping back into the yard, pulling my left hand across my body, whipping it toward the nearer window and letting go of my shoe. It hit and went through with a shockingly loud crash, but either the sound of broken glass landing on the floor inside was muffled by those draperies or I just didn’t hear it because I was still moving—moving one more long step forward and jamming my stockinged foot against the dirt, slowing enough to uncoil my already cocked right hand and toss my other shoe at the window behind which the stocky man was sitting—or, rather, had been sitting, because I’d have given a hundred to one he was not sitting any longer.

  Four long fast steps and I was back at the broken door, two short ones and I stood in the hallway, Colt in my right hand, left on the knob of the door behind which were Cassiday and at least one other man.

  It was not a time to wonder if the stocky boy was looking at one of the draped windows or straight toward where I was, so I just turned the knob and shoved the door hard and fast, and went in low.

  I had him. He wasn’t even looking toward me. He was in a half-squat, eyes still aimed downward, toward one of my big shoes. Which have, on occasion, caused comment even when on my feet. His gun was pointed in the general direction of the window near him and I had him cold, but he got off the first shot.

  I’ve no excuse except that I suddenly saw more blood than I’d ever seen in one spot in my life, and it was a shocking thing even for a man who’s seen spilled blood by the quart. I went into the room low and fast, and my right foot slipped a little when I shoved it against the floor to stop and steady myself, but that little slip wasn’t why I was late in pulling the Colt’s trigger.

  Cassiday was just a blurred figure close on my left and beyond him was another chair with a man in it, his back to me but with his body twisted and head craned around so I could see three-quarters of that Roman-coin face, lips covered as were Cassiday’s by a strip of tape over them. Bruno this time, unquestionably Emmanuel Bruno. But there were two other figures on my right, one moving and one still.

  Movement was the stocky thick-in-the-middle boy snapping his head around and pulling his gun toward me, stillness was a man I’d never seen before, his hands also bound behind him—the third guy in the room tied to a chair—but this one with his body hanging forward and restrained by the ropes around them, white face almost upside down, head dangling, waxen chin not quite touching his chest.

  Both his shirt sleeves were rolled up over his elbows, and the left leg of his trousers was pulled above the knee. From what looked like a small cut in his left calf, a calf white as a piano key, brilliant red blood had poured down over his ankle, drenched his stocking and shoe, spilled to the floor. It wasn’t the man yanking his gun toward me, or even Bruno whom I’d at least half-expected to see, nor even the surprising sight of the dead man, it was the floor—that incredible, glistening, impossibly red floor—that shook me, held me, slowed my reactions for too long.

  Except for half a dozen spots, the smallest being only a couple of inches wide on up to one a foot or more across, the whole damned floor was red. Those few spots were the dry places, their color the natural off-white of the plastic-tile floor covering—all of that red was blood.

  The man hanging forward in the chair was dead, there wasn’t any question about that. And he had clearly been cut or knifed, had bled, and his blood had dripped or oozed down to the floor—but one man couldn’t have bled that much.

  That thought and the sight of what seemed a lake of redness all around me held my brain for half a second, or maybe longer—long enough for the man near that waxen corpse to get his gun pointed in my direction and squeeze the trigger. But he was shaken up himself, more than a little, and the bullet ripped past my head and smacked into the wall behind me.

  Barely after his slug hit, I was pulling the Colt’s trigger. I pulled it twice and his body jerked as both 110-grain chunks of metal pounded into him, burst and slivered inside him, and he turned slightly and his knees bent. He started down slowly, but the gun was still in his hand and I squeezed off the third shot, saw his shirt jump where the slug entered his chest.

  The gun dropped with a clatter as he bent forward and then fell suddenly, heavily. His shoulder thudded against the floor, his head snapped down and hit with the crack of a handball bouncing from cement. I jumped forward and kicked the gun away—forgetting I was in my stocking feet, and grunting as pain ripped through my foot—then backed across the room and pressed my shoulders against the wall.

  The stocky man wasn’t dead yet; but he didn’t have far to go. He quivered the way a man will quiver in freezing cold, turning onto his back, right leg pulling up toward his body, then sliding down again, the heel of his shoe the only sound, a tiny scraping sound, sliding and then stopping.

  For a little time, I’m not sure how long a time, I could see the pale off-white streak where his heel had scraped the blood away, then it flowed in and covered the mark, and there was a smoothly glistening redness again.

  8

  I turned my eyes—and gun—toward the door through which I’d come. But there was no further sound, no shouts or footsteps. I went out, down the hall, gave the rest of the house a fast check. Nothing. Back in the room I eased the tape from Bruno’s mouth, started untying him. And the first thing he said to me in a rich, full, resonant voice was, “How do you do, Mr. Scott?”

  Like, “Isn’t it a lovely day?”

  “I’ll let you know,” I said. “Anyone else around here besides that guy and Cassiday? It is Dave Cassiday, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. There were two other men. They left nearly half an hour ago
. There is no one here now except the four—” He glanced at the stocky man’s body and went on, “—or perhaps three of us.”

  “Three. What happened?” I worked on the rope around his wrists.

  He didn’t mention Dru, but obviously assumed—correctly—that she must have told me everything she knew and had guessed, and went on as though merely adding his information to what she’d told me. “I met André in front of the church. Dave had just arrived and was with André who had phoned him also. Within seconds the two men who are not now here—one is your height but heavier and with a ruddy complexion, the other slim and probably one inch under six feet, with a grayish white streak in the hair at the center of his forehead and a small mole at the left side of his nose—approached with guns in their hands and forced us all to enter a year-old dark-blue Chrysler sedan, four-door, with a slightly dented right-rear fender and a right-front fender that had been repainted, and eighteen thousand, four hundred and twenty miles on the speedometer. I don’t know the license number.”

  “How come?”

  “I didn’t see it.”

  Cassiday was making noises behind his gag. It sounded as if he were humming the latest teen-agers’ hit. I glanced at him. “Be with you in a minute.”

  “Nor did I see the left side of the car,” Bruno continued. “I was able to examine the car’s right side because before we entered it another auto came into the parking lot and its lights briefly illumined the Chrysler. That car parked well beyond us. A girl got out of it and hurried toward the church, waving as she passed quite close to us. The shorter, slimmer man had pushed Dave into the middle of the front seat and was still standing outside the car waiting for André to get in. I was in back with the other man and André was just entering the front of the car. I doubt she knew the gunman, so I concluded she was waving to André. She went on into the church and the tall man drove us to this address, where the man you just killed was waiting. Do you have any questions to this point, Mr. Scott?”