Some Die Hard

by Stephen Mertz

  "You can trust me," I told him, and I slipped the car into gear.

  We pulled out onto the street and the gun—it felt like it might be a .38-dropped from sight. But I still did as I was told. Maybe you've seen some movies or TV shows where the hero jerks the wheel in a case like this or does something equally careless, but don't believe it. Guns are scary enough anywhere, but when, they start going off in cars it's anyone's guess who'll catch what. And besides, Moran was an unknown quantity. I'd liked him when we'd met the day before but now here he was, death in his hand aimed at my skull, and I wasn't just sure how much or how little it would take to set him off. So I played it cool. I drove and kept my mouth shut, just like I was told.

  It was interesting, I thought. Here I was driving down the main drag of a small midwestern town, surrounded on all sides by cars, jeeps and pickups carrying all sorts of nice, upstanding, everyday type people about their daily chores, and not a one of them knew about the drama that was unfolding only a few feet away. The struggle of life and possible death that was unfolding right before their eyes.

  You get thoughts like that sometimes, at times like that, when nothing is being said...

  I'd registered at a twenty unit, independently owned place, called the Shangri-la, and there was no one around except one older Chicano woman pushing a dirty laundry cart when we pulled in five minutes later. I stopped in front of my door and got out and waited. I might have had a chance then, Jinx had to squeeze over to climb out, but he was the careful type and the .38 was on my belly all the way, and in such a way that no one back in the glass-fronted office could see it. The woman with the laundry cart disappeared around a corner and then we had the parking lot to ourselves.

  "Inside," he ordered. "You're being real smart, Dugan. Just try and stay that way, okay?"

  "I'll try," I told him, and we went in.

  It was a typical motel apartment; sterile, with no personality whatsoever but comfortable, just the same. My suitcase was spread out on a little metal and cloth folding dingus supplied for that purpose, and there really wasn't that much packing involved. I got it done in no time while he watched and was just putting away the toothbrush and shaving cream when I decided to do some snooping.

  "Zucco must be getting scared," I said, "to send boys around waving guns this early in the game."

  He was sitting in a chair against the front window with the revolver still pointing at my middle.

  "Just keep packing, huh? We'll wait here until two-fifteen, then we'll make a short trip downtown to the bus depot and say bye-bye."

  I snapped the suitcase shut and set it down on the carpet. "That's an hour from now. How about some TV?"

  He shrugged. "Suit yourself. It's your room."

  I nodded my appreciation and turned back to the set. It was one of those situated about shoulder level above the suitcase stand. I reached up and flicked it on, getting some game show featuring three lookalike housewives, vying for five lookalike gifts, presided over by a sleazy moderator who looked like every other one I'd ever seen.

  I watched the TV and Jinx watched me, and that went on for about ten minutes, or seven commercials, depending on which way you look at those things. Finally, I decided to give another try at breaking the ice.

  "Why are you doing this, Jinx? I don't understand."

  "Let's just watch the TV, pal."

  "No, really. Why are you doing it? You're not going to shoot me or I'd be dead already, and a little talk's not going to hurt anything. So go ahead, tell me. What's the score? Why the gun? We got along fine yesterday."

  "Let's just say I'm doing someone a favor."

  "Well, it's not me, is it? And you're not helping Carlander Court out any, either."

  "He's dead."

  "His killer isn't."

  His eyebrows flickered. "What're you talking about? Mr. Court committed suicide."

  I shook my head. "He was murdered, Jinx. And I'm trying to find out by who."

  "No, you're not. No, you're not. You're just trying to stir up trouble. And now you're trying to get me confused."

  "Jinx—"

  But he was on a kick and he didn't want to stop, and the gun said the floor was his.

  "Wha' d' you think, I'm some kind of fool? That's what a lot of people think, or thought. All my life. And sometimes I even believed it, when things went wrong. And a lot of things did go wrong, Dugan. How do you think I picked up the name Jinx? But things started going right when I came to this town. People started treating me good. And now I'm one of them, and I feel the same way they do about outsiders. So don't give me any shit. We're seeing you on that bus and that's all. This gun is just a warning. Langdon Springs doesn't need you, friend, and you better not come back!"

  He'd worked himself up to such a degree that I decided I'd better just let him cool down awhile, so I pulled my legs up onto the bed and crossed them at the ankles with my hands behind my head, and gave my attention back to the TV. Another game show was on now and, except for the moderator, this one was indistinguishable from the last. Even the housewives looked the same.

  I kept my eyes on the tube for nearly fifteen minutes, and then I noticed something interesting. Naturally enough, I guess, Jinx's eyes would momentarily drift up to the screen from time to time too. With two quiet people in a room and a TV blaring at them it was an instinct that would take a lot of effort, or training, to avoid, and no matter how I sized him up I just couldn't picture Jinx Moran as a professional gunman. So, as his eyes drifted up to that flashing color picture more and more often, I let my hands slide down slowly from behind my head until they were under the covers and clasped around the pillow beneath me. My mind was buzzing now, looking for an opening, or an opportunity to make one.

  I drew back on what little discussion we'd had since I'd climbed into the Toyota outside City Hall, reaching for a hook that would get him talking, would put him even more at ease.

  Well, people love to talk about themselves, I reasoned. And he had mentioned a lot of things wrong in his life before he'd come to Langdon Springs—

  "You're an interesting guy, Jinx,'' I started conversationally. "You sound like you've been around."

  "I have, buddy, I have." His mouth wrinkled into a wry grimace. "Hell, I worked the carnival circuit for nine years. You can't get more around than that."

  "Sounds interesting."

  He nodded. "It was, man. Shit, I was everything from a barker to a clown to Hypno the Hypnotist to the Wild Man From Borneo." Warming to his subject, his eyes drifted once more to the television set. "Yeah, I got around, all right. And—"

  And that was as far as he got.

  It had come. The break I'd wanted.

  The break I'd made.

  I leaned forward and swung my arm, the arm with the hand holding the pillow, around in one smooth, sailing motion, sending the pillow flying at him. It was just a pillow, of course, but it did the trick. It was the surprise more than anything else. He'd been watching TV again and now as he turned to see what the movement was the pillow came up under the gun and jerked him back into the chair, and then I was coming down at him too, right on the pillow's tail.

  I plowed into him with one hand, my left, grasping him around the gun wrist and pushing it towards the floor and my other connecting with his jaw, sending us both back in the chair, careening loudly against the radiator under the window and then falling forward onto the floor, him on top.

  But that didn't last long.

  He was trying to bring his gun hand back into play and I was still resisting with my left hand holding onto his wrist, and that in itself was enough to keep him busy, slightly off balance. With the rest of my strength I got a foot flat on the ground, used that for leverage and pushed with everything I had. My body slammed into him with bone-rattling impact and the force of the blow disentangled us immediately, sending him reeling back onto his haunches.

  The only trouble was, his gun went with him.

  Faster than the thoughts themselves could registe
r, I realized that there were two openings to me. I still had my own .44 in the shoulder holster under my arm; Jinx hadn't thought to frisk me, proving once again that he wasn't your everyday professional. So I could make a grab for that and give the old Mexican standoff a try, or I could go down after him again and play tag with his own gun...

  But while it took only seconds to turn those thoughts over in my mind, I realized then that those seconds were too much time spent already. Moving faster than I would have thought him capable, the little jockey was back on his pins and coming at me with the momentum of a crosscountry freight.

  "You bastard—" he snarled, and the hand with the .38 lashed out at my favorite face.

  It lashed out, and it connected. And after that...nothing.

  Nothing except a whirling kaleidoscope of pain and nausea and, I guess, some fear.

  I was aware of falling and, in falling, smashing my head against something else. Probably the damned radiator. And that was all.

  Time ceased to exist, then.

  Time, or the passage of it.

  I thought I felt someone shaking me; a man's voice asking if I was all right; and the impression that he was mighty sure I wasn't. I thought I heard him curse as he rose and stepped back. A bitter curse, and a frightened one. And then the scrambling of feet. The opening and closing of a door.

  And that was it.

  No more impressions, no more voices reaching out to me from just beyond the brink of infinity. Nothing now but an all-encompassing, omnipresent darkness, cloaking me to its breast, removing me from everything...

  When I came to I was still on the floor and my wristwatch said it was ten minutes later, and I was alone.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I made it into the bathroom, washed my face, checked the bruise on my jaw in the mirror, decided nothing had been broken, and went back to sit on the bed and take a look at the phonebook. The only Harmon listed was a Paul Harmon, and I wrote down the address, went outside and climbed into the Toyota.

  I wasn't worried about Jinx Moran. Looking back now on the impressions I'd gotten just after he conked me, I realized he must have thought I was dead and split. Well, if he decided to leave town I wasn't about to traipse all over the country looking for him, and I surely wasn't about to ask Medwick, who was obviously Zucco's man, for any help either. And if he decided to brazen it out and stay in Langdon Springs, I figured he'd be easy enough to find anytime I wanted him.

  Right now my mind was on Eve Harmon, the woman Tommy Court was keeping "across the tracks". Something Medwick had told Zucco over the phone after I'd left had stuck in my mind, and I knew I'd have to move fast.

  People were starting to flash guns around in other people's faces, and that meant someone was scared.

  The address of Paul Harmon was a small, folksy one story house situated on a middle-class street on the south end of town. I drove past once to get my bearings, circled the block and pulled up on the opposite side a few houses down, cutting the engine.

  A man and a woman stood in the doorway of the house, talking. The man was Tommy Court and the woman was a slenderish blonde somewhere in her mid-thirties, outfitted in a loose jersey that did nothing to hide a damn nice set of curves.

  I leaned back for a few minutes to watch the action, and there was plenty. The lovebirds were fighting.

  They'd been snapping and shouting at each other, though I couldn't hear the words, when I drove up, and now her hand swung out at the kid's face and that did it. Tommy seemed to erupt with rage, and I guessed I wasn't the only person that afternoon in for some punishment.

  He backhanded the woman once, twice, three times, and the blows looked like they really shook some teeth. It wasn't typical lovers spat stuff and, what's worse, he seemed to be enjoying it.

  The blonde stumbled back into the house and Tommy turned and straightened his sport coat and walked down the sidewalk to the Corvette parked at the curb. He was just slipping in when the woman reappeared at the door, holding the side of her face and yelling angrily across the yard at him. But she was drowned out as the engine growled to life and with a squeal of tires the bucket tore off down the street, heading north past me.

  She had already gone back into the house, closing the door behind her, when I decided to make my move. I got out, walked up the sidewalk and gave the front doorbell a push. I had to push it twice before the door flew open, and I was suddenly face to face with two green eyes screaming murder.

  "Court, you lousy little creep, I told you—" And then she saw it wasn't Court and she faltered for a moment. "Y-you're not Tommy—"

  Up close she wasn't that pretty. I could see the crow's feet around her eyes, and the hardness of her features was more apparent. Her hair was a disarrayed mess and there were large red marks on either side of her face where she'd been slapped. And she'd been drinking. She'd been drinking plenty. It showed on her breath and in the jerkiness of her movements and in the dazed expression of her eyes, and I hadn't seen any of that from the street either.

  "Miss Harmon?"

  "Mrs. Harmon," she corrected, in a slightly slurred voice. "As if it makes any difference."

  Her attention was only partially on me. She still stole an occasional glance over my shoulder to keep an eye out for big bad Tommy.

  "My name is Dugan, Mrs. Harmon," I told her. "I'm looking into the murder of Carlander Court."

  That brought her attention back where I wanted it. "Murder? But I thought—"

  "That it was suicide?" I nodded. "That's what the papers are suggesting, and that's what the police want people to think. But my client thinks differently."

  "Your client?"

  "Yes. Mr. Court's daughter, Susan."

  That was all she wanted to hear. Her hands tightened on the door as she started to close it. "I'm sorry, lover, but you'll have to peddle your wares somewhere else. I've had my fill of the Court family for one lifetime."

  I put a foot in the door.

  "I think I have some information about your husband," I said softly.

  That's right, I'd finally added up two and two and come up with four, and I'd found a way to use it.

  "Paul—"

  "May I come in?"

  She hesitated, then stepped aside. "Yes. Please..."

  I moved in past her and she closed the door behind me. The living room of the house was not particularly tastefully furnished, but even what there was had been allowed to deteriorate. The place was a mess; dusty, with clothes, magazines and crumpled cigarette packs strewn all over. It looked like a living room inhabited by someone going to pieces and that was all the more the pity. Her hips and the curves of her buttocks moved enticingly beneath the jersey robe.

  She was still a fine figure of a woman, as our grandfathers used to say.

  She motioned to a couch. "Have a seat," she offered. "I'm...I'm sorry about the mess. Can I get you a drink?"

  I sat, and I couldn't keep my fingertips from drumming idly beside me.

  "Scotch and water would be nice if it's handy."

  "Coming right up." She crossed to a small bar in an alcove against the opposite wall and began filling my order. ''What do your friends call you, Mr. Dugan?"

  "Rock. It's a nickname."

  She nodded slowly. "Rock. Rock Dugan. That's a very tough sounding nickname, isn't it?" She came back over, a drink in each hand, and handed me one. "My name is Eve."

  She sat down next to me and we both sipped the whiskey. It was one of those moments.

  Then she said, "Paul is dead, isn't he?"

  I sipped a little more. Between Hanley, Medwick and Jinx Moran I had worked up quite a parched throat, and it felt good going down.

  "I think so," I said.

  She nodded and cupped the glass in her lap. "I should have guessed. I should have known. I guess my mind was just rationalizing things away." She looked up at me. "A person's mind can do that, you know."

  "I know."

  She looked back into her lap. "So Paul Harmon is dead." She smiled s
lightly, without humor. "And the world sure as hell won't be a worse place without him." She looked back up at me once again and I could see that tears weren't too far away. "But he was good to me, Dugan. Most of the time. Most of the time he was real good."

  She rose quickly, as if to break the mood,. and went over to look out at the street through a partially draped window.

  "Ha, look at me," she said cynically, her eyes still on the street. "The grieving widow! Paul's been gone nearly two months and I've been sleeping with another man for three. Yeah. I've got a real right to be broken up."

  "I spoke with Chief Medwick of the Police this morning," I said, softly and slowly. I didn't like saying it, it put a bad taste in my mouth, but I said it anyway. "I was asking him about an alleged stabbing Tommy was involved in outside of Murray Zucco's nightclub. Supposedly a man was killed, but Medwick claimed he didn't know anything about it. After I was gone he called Zucco on the phone and told him that I 'knew about Harmon'." I sighed, finished with, "You can add that up any way you want to, but it's pretty obvious to me that your husband was the other man in the fight. I think Tommy killed him."

  She nodded slowly. "I know. I mean, I know it now. I guess I knew it all along. I just didn't want to face it." She turned and walked over to me. "I haven't had much luck with men, have I, Rock? You've seen Tommy. You never met Paul, but he was no prize either."

  And then the rage inside couldn't be contained any longer. It surfaced without warning, explosively. She spun, threw the glass brutally at the far wall. It shattered into a million pieces and the whiskey ran in weird patterns down to the floor.

  "It's this town! This damned, horrible town!" She whirled back on me. "The boredom, the unending sameness day after day—it does things to people! Paul thought if he could hustle, if he could just get enough money, we could get away. Only he wanted easy money, and it led him to people like Murray Zucco...and it got him killed. And Tommy, that crummy little bastard! They're animals, Rock...animals!"

  You can only dole out so much punishment to yourself, and that was all the rage she had left. It washed away then. Washed away as the shock and the booze and everything else broke apart the dam inside, and the grief that had been suppressed for so long took over, shaking her body with pitiful, racking, unashamed sobs.