Nothing to Lose But My Life

by Louis Trimble

  I relaxed like she told me and she walked away. I turned my head to watch her and it struck me how weary she must be. Tanya was a big woman, a strong and vigorous woman, but even she had limits. And dragging me out of that vacant lot, hiding me in her closet while she faced the police, and then getting me into her bed must have been about all she could take.

  I said, “Did they really run or did you have to chase them off to get at me?”

  “I chased them,” she said. “They tried shooting at me too but I had the advantage of being in the dark by the corner of the garage. They drove off almost like I told the police—two of them carrying a third one.”

  I wonder which one she’d hit. Then I stopped thinking about it because Tanya stumbled, caught herself, and stumbled again. I heard her say, “You need a hot bath and—”

  She turned toward me, a foolish look on her face. I started off the bed and she half ran, half fell and landed across my leg.

  I didn’t need to look at her to know what was the matter. Her dead weight was enough. She had passed out cold.

  It was all I could do to roll her off my leg so I could get up. Even that effort started the crease in my ribs oozing blood again. I ignored it for the moment. Because when she fell, she fell face down, and I could see the hole in her skirt. It was on her hip, just above the buttock. Around it, the cloth was soggy with blood.

  I wasn’t the only one who had been shot.

  I went a little berserk. I dashed around, bringing hot water, bandages, grinning like a fool when I found some sulpha powder. I tried pulling up her skirt but it was too tight over her hips. I ended by taking scissors and cutting her clothes off her. I peeled her down to nothing, wanting no constricting clothing to press on her.

  She had bandaged the wound once but the bandage had slipped and dangled now, soggy with blood from a strip of adhesive. The wound was like mine, a flesh crease. It looked clean but even so it was nothing to play amateur doctor with. As I looked down at my own job of bandaging, I realized I might be taking too great a chance with her health.

  I went to the telephone. It was eleven-thirty, a good hour for what I had to do. I called Nikke. I said, “Lowry here. I need help.”

  “What’s going on?” Nikke demanded. “I hear the cops were up at Tanya’s and they’re looking for Enid.”

  “Did Tanya tell you that she was shot chasing your men away from me?” I demanded.

  Nikke exploded. He sounded a lot rougher than he had when he was cursing me. I said, “Emmett and Perly and Jake, Nikke. What did you send a crew like that for?”

  “I didn’t send them,” Nikke said. He was quiet, too quiet. “How is she, Lowry?”

  I told him what I’d done and why I was afraid to let her stay here. He said, “I hear the cops are staking her place out. That means they suspect something.”

  “To hell with the cops,” I said. “I want a doctor for Tanya.”

  “Can you drive? Can you get her down here?”

  “If the cops don’t stop me.” I saw what he was driving at. His place was outside the city. Once there, we might have a breathing spell. He couldn’t do much for us if the local police got their hands on us. I doubted if he wanted to do much for me anyway, but he was obviously concerned about Tanya.

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  “Thirty minutes,” he told me.

  “Make it twenty,” I said and hung up. I walked slowly back into the bedroom. Tanya’s color looked better. The main reason for her fainting, I knew, was from shock. I checked her bandage and had to change it. It was a nice clean wound, but it was bleeding too much.

  There was only one thing to do now. I had to have her co-operation if I was to get anywhere. I needed her conscious, moving under her own power.

  Cold water started the job and a short drink of whiskey finished it. She lay for a moment staring blankly and then her eyes cleared and she saw me.

  “Listen,” I said, “we have to get out of here. Nikke said the cops are snooping around. We’re going to his place. He’ll have a doctor.”

  She started to answer and stopped as she noticed her lack of clothing. She was all woman, that one. “Lowry, damn it, this is no time to make passes—”

  “If you wouldn’t wear those onionskin outfits,” I said, “I wouldn’t have to strip you to put on a bandage.”

  “Oh,” she said. She tried to get up. I helped her to her feet. She looked back and down at herself. She nodded her approval of my surgical technique. Then we went to work. I helped her dress and she helped me. We were quite a pair, Tanya with a hole in her hip and I with a small gully across my ribs. But we managed. I got into the clothes I had had on, dirty and bloody and torn as they were. She decided on slacks and a short coat. When we were ready to leave, she dropped a gun into the pocket of her coat.

  I said, “If there’s a cop out there, we’ll have to drive like hell. I’ll drive. You lie low. There used to be a way out of this town without having to go down the slope. If I can find the road …”

  “There still is,” she said. “Over the crest, through a dirt cut, and onto pavement. It’s passable.”

  Chapter XI

  WE WENT into the garage. Tanya crouched down in back while I warmed up the station wagon. Both of us looked like ghosts and I at least, felt about as substantial as one. I knew we’d have to hurry or we wouldn’t make it even with a clear road. I was getting lightheaded.

  I opened the garage doors and returned to the car. It was aimed nose out. I sat a moment. Nothing happened. If anyone was watching, there was no indication of it. I put the car into gear and eased onto the road.

  The car that came at us timed it almost too well. It had been sitting in front of the entrance to the flat, lights out, motor idling. I knew it wasn’t the police. They didn’t come at you without lights, with windows down and guns pointing. I saw them coming and jammed down on the throttle and prayed that the station wagon had the power it was advertised to have.

  The wheels spit rubber, caught, and jerked up forward. The other car swung in toward the bank on the left to keep from ramming us. Guns made noises like cannons. The back window went and two holes appeared in the windshield. They had been going slowly, wanting to make sure of their target, and the station wagon had that few seconds of acceleration advantage that was so important. When they straightened out, we were a dozen feet up the road.

  I shifted. I dug down again and when we met the road going up the crest, swung to the left. The sedan was heavy and powerful and the driver hung right on my tail. I ground up the pitch to the crest, took a sharp, arcing curve to the right and then dipped straight down over what looked like a bank of dirt.

  Tanya was right. The little cut was still there. It was perhaps fifty feet of rutted cowpath, nothing more. The station wagon scraped bottom once, bounded over a rock, slammed back down, and then landed on pavement. I shifted down and started to the left.

  Tanya said, “Hold it, Lowry. They have too much car for us. Once we get down on the flat, they’ll get us easily.”

  “So we—” I started to say, and then understood. I opened my mouth to protest but it was too late. Tanya had got out of the station wagon and was standing beside the opened door. The sedan was coming down the cut, slowly, unsure of what lay ahead. Just as it reached the drop to the pavement, Tanya fired. She was aiming low, for a tire. She shot twice, half fell into the station wagon, and said, “Drive, Lowry!”

  I guess she thought she hit the tire because the sedan wavered as if a drunk was behind the wheel. I didn’t tell her that she really should learn how to shoot a hand gun. When she fired, she had lifted the snout. I saw what happened. She missed the tires altogether. But she hit the driver. I didn’t tell her. I gunned the motor, hoping she wouldn’t hear the scream I could hear. Because I could see in the rear-view mirror and the sedan wasn’t turning as we had turned. It was going straight on, out into nothingness.

  This was the upper end of the road where Enid and I had parked to look down over the city
and the south. It was in bad repair, washed half out here and there, only sheer cliff on the right. I kept to the left, not hurrying, but not dallying. Ultimately it would drop us to a county road and that would take us across the flats to the highway. From there we could turn north and go back toward the city to the turn-off for the hill.

  When we reached the flats I did hurry. My eyes weren’t focusing correctly and I kept dodging things that came at me out of the dark only weren’t there when I reached them. The county road was bad enough but on the highway it was worse. There were the unreal things and real ones too. And when we finally made the turn-off onto the hill, there were the police to worry about. I slowed down for that last quarter mile from the highway to Nikke’s

  Tanya said, “There’s nothing suspicious behind us, Lowry. I guess I stopped them.”

  “A flat tire is pretty hard to drive on,” I said. My throat was dry. My head ached, especially behind the eyeballs. “You did some nice shooting.”

  “Thanks.” She sounded pleased.

  I heard sirens. They weren’t coming for us, not yet. They would be going for the base of the cliff, I thought, to look at what was left of the sedan and those in it. I felt a little sick.

  That quarter mile was the longest, most aching quarter mile I ever drove. The shadows kept getting worse, leaping in front of the car now. And the sirens were loud in my ears. I tried to tell myself they weren’t real, that it was all in my head, but it did no good. I heard them anyway.

  Then there was Nikke’s. The gleaming cars were there as usual, parked in the side lot. There were soft lights showing dimly onto the veranda. I swung around the back. There was a delivery alley at the rear. The alley and then a wide space. I swung, making a sharp right turn. A cavernous opening came up at me. Nikke’s basement garage was open.

  I heard the sirens again, but real ones this time, farther away than those just in my head. But coming this way. We hadn’t fooled anyone, I thought. The cops had figured us out some way. I felt the car dip down. I had the sense to cut the motor and dim the lights.

  Behind me I heard overhead garage doors drop into place and darkness engulfed us. I slammed on the brake. Then, for the second time in a few hours, I blacked out.

  • • •

  Tanya was shaking me by the shoulder. I swam up out of sleep to find out why she was disturbing me. “Lowry, Lowry, damn it …”

  I opened my eyes. I was on a cot in a cement-floored room. There was a single bulb hanging bare from a low unfinished ceiling. Tanya leaned over me, her hair hanging around her face. She wore no make-up and she looked tired and drawn—and beautiful.

  I said, “You’re all right?”

  “Just a scratch, Lowry.” She smiled at me in relief. “And so are you. The doctor said you could get up. We have to leave here.”

  I was stupid from sleep. The inside of my mouth tasted terrible. I lifted an arm to rub some of the sleep from my eyes and I felt a pull along my ribs. Now both sides of me were bandaged. I had a lot of questions but one look at Tanya kept me from asking them. Whatever was bothering her went down deep.

  I let her help me up, stood swaying for a moment, and then walked with her through a narrow doorway. We stepped into Nikke’s underground garage, and now a few memories began to tick over in my mind.

  Tanya urged me as fast as she dared, helping me into a small dark coupé, glanced behind the seat as if to check something, and slid beneath the wheel. She sat gingerly, one hip slightly raised. She lifted a hand.

  There was no one in sight but the overhead doors raised in front of us. Tanya took the coupé up the incline and turned right into the alley. We went along it like a singed cat, swung left at the end, and headed for the highway.

  It was night, about seven o’clock from the number of lights in the dining rooms of the houses we passed. The moon was not yet up and there was a faint haze over the stars. The air was warm. As we hurried along, I heard a not too distant siren coming up the Hill from town. It reminded me of other sirens I had heard recently.

  “What the devil happened?” I demanded. My grogginess was beginning to wear off.

  “It’s been fourteen hours since you passed out,” Tanya said. “A lot can happen in fourteen hours.”

  “It must have,” I said listening to the sirens. “Who are those for—us?”

  “Us,” Tanya agreed. “Nikke got a tip that the police were coming to his place to search for us.”

  So he’d tossed us to the wolves. It was just as well. I wanted no favors from Nikke. “Did he put the pressure on for you to go?” I asked her.

  “No,” she said quickly. “It was my idea. Nikke wanted to hide us until he could get a chance to run us down to Mexico.”

  To Mexico—just like that. A lot of questions popped into my mind but only one word stuck: “Us.” I said it aloud.

  Tanya could drive. She braked briefly before diving across the highway traffic and starting across a poorly paved side road that stretched toward the Coast Range not far to the east.

  “Us,” she said. “Nikke has a kind of shuttle service to Mexico.”

  I knew about it. Where Nikke came from it wasn’t wise to leave yourself without some way of making fast tracks. From force of habit, Nikke had made himself an escape hatch on settling in Puerto Bello. This one went from a small island just off the coast, via air to the middle of Baja California, again by air across the Gulf of California to the interior desert of Mexico, and from there to Guadalajara where he had a house. But Tanya hadn’t answered my question.

  “Why us?” I demanded.

  She said, “Your papers and money and clothes are in a bag behind the seat, Lowry. Travis got the stuff from the motel safe. I have money too. Nikke wants us to go to Mexico and wait.”

  “Wait for what?” I demanded.

  “For him to get things squared away here,” she explained. “He’s trying to get the pressure off us by finding out who really killed Hoop. But it’s slow work. He has only two men he can trust. The rest belong to the Syndicate.”

  Since Nikke was the Syndicate, what Tanya said made no sense. I told her as much. She didn’t answer for some time; she was busy driving. Whipping the car around a sharp curve, she hit better highway and opened up. Eucalyptus trees blurred by on either side of us. A farm lay nearly dark on the right. Ahead manzanita and sage-covered hills were touched by the first light of the moon topping them.

  “Lowry,” she said suddenly, “Nikke isn’t the Syndicate. He’s under them just like Hoop was—like a lot of people are.”

  “Sure,” I agreed. “And Nikke wants us to get to Mexico out of sheer love for me.” I said a short, ugly word. “You mean he wants me to take you there and watch out for you until he can come and get rid of me. Does he think you’d keep me so occupied, I’d forget to duck when he showed up?”

  She ignored me. We started climbing into the hills and she slowed enough so that she could take the curves without too much slackening of speed. She seemed to know where she was going. I didn’t.

  “I’m just killing time. When the pressure is off we’ll go back and Nikke can ship us to Mexico.”

  She was insistent about it, I thought. I said, “You maybe. I’m staying.”

  Tanya said in a patient tone, “Lowry, I told you that in the past fourteen hours a lot has happened. And it has. Perly and Jake and Emmett were in that car following us down the Slope. It went over the cliff.”

  So she had learned that. I said, “I’m not crying.”

  “Emmett came out alive,” she went on. “A missing tooth and a bruise on his chin. He told the police that you and I deliberately shot the driver and sent the car over the edge. So we’re not just murderers, Lowry. We’re butchers.”

  I said, “You too now?”

  “Me, too.”

  “Then you go to Mexico,” I said. “Let Nikke ship you out, but don’t look for him to join you. Because I’m staying and cleaning up this mess and Nikke is the part of it that needs cleaning the most. You go, but
don’t expect me to go with you and spend the rest of my life sweating every time I see a cop or a tough tourist who looks like a Syndicate man. No thanks.”

  “Bitter. Still bitter,” Tanya murmured.

  “Five years of it inside me,” I reminded her. I shook thinking about it. “Hoop got away. Nikke won’t be so lucky.”

  Tanya didn’t answer, but I was wound up and didn’t need any encouragement. I let it come out. “Perhaps I should thank Nikke for taking us in last night. I do thank him—for you. But remember that he didn’t do it for me. Anymore than he’d send me to Mexico to save my neck. Hell, no. He wants your safety. And down there, I’d be off his neck.”

  She said, “When was a better chance to get you off than last night? You were out cold. All he had to do was take you and plant you somewhere for the police to find. Anywhere.”

  I was too angry to think clearly. Besides, I was lightheaded. Her logic didn’t even slow me down. I realized that I had a fever and that I felt lousy because whatever painkilling drug I had been given was wearing off. Realizing that made me madder—being doped when I couldn’t protest.

  I said, “Nikke’s devious. How in hell do I know why he let me live this long? But let me ask the questions. When he had Travis get my stuff from the motel safe, how much did he leave me?”

  “Everything. Your envelopes. The money. There’s over fifty thousand dollars in your bag, Lowry.”

  I said, feeling triumphant, “And those photographs of you?”

  “Those were mine. I took them and burned them.”

  In my fuzzy state, it seemed to me that I had her on the run now. I said, “Who was the man in them, Tanya? Who was the man you killed?”

  She slowed the car until it seemed as if we were crawling. “My husband, Bill Mace.”

  “Blackmail,” I said. “You were being blackmailed with them, weren’t you?”

  “In a way—yes.”

  I crowed in triumph. “Then if Nikke thinks so damned much of you, why did he let that go on happening?”

  “I told you. Nikke isn’t the Syndicate. The Syndicate has the negatives. What could he do?”