Hit and The Marksman

by Brian Garfield

  When we were out of his earshot Joanne had identified him for me—Ed Behrenman. So we were well-covered—Behrenman in front, with the car; the girl in the bar; watching us; and doubtless a third man somewhere in back where he could watch the room and my Jeep and Joanne’s car.

  I wanted to get us out from under Madonna’s surveillance, perhaps for no reason other than that it made me nervous. But this wasn’t the place to do it. If we’d had a reliable friend with a car we might have pulled it off, and I thought of two or three but ruled them out. On the road was better, I decided. So while Joanne did her lips, I went out into the lobby and paid the room phone charges at the desk, telling the clerk we planned to leave very early in the morning and wanted to take care of this now. By the time I paid the dinner bill at the dining-room cashier’s desk, Joanne was up and walking. We went outside without paying any attention to the bar girl, who followed us at a discreet distance until she made sure we were out the front door and within Behrenman’s view.

  We went through the ice-machine alley and as we approached the room I said, “We’re not going inside, but make it look as if we’re headed for the room until we get parallel with the Jeep.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’ll drive around and ditch our friends, then go pick up Mike. I want to hide both of you out.”

  She didn’t get inquisitive. We walked past the winch on the front bumper of the Jeep, walking as if we intended to turn into the room, but then I grasped her elbow lightly and gave her a half-turn, making it look as if I’d changed my mind at the last minute. I climbed into the driver’s seat and by the time I had fitted the key into the ignition, Joanne had walked around and got in. I backed out and headed diagonally across the concrete parking area, not wasting time but not in an obvious hurry. We drove around the back of the place to the far end and went out to the road there.

  It would take the watcher in back a few moments to hot-foot through the alley to the front and alert Behrenman, who had the car. I didn’t want to make it obvious we were trying to shake them, so I didn’t pour it on when I pulled out on the road and headed south, toward the freeway interchange. It took us right past the front of the motel and of course by the time we started up the ramp Behrenman was rolling out onto the road. Now I knew where I’d seen him before. It was the same green sedan that had buzzed past when I’d driven out of the motel before noon. He’d probably spotted me coming out of the place, recognized either me or my Jeep, and made a U-turn beyond the cloverleaf to come back and investigate. That must have been when he’d picked up Joanne, phoned Madonna and then phoned Dr. Brawley.

  The freeway had a moderate after-dinner traffic load. Teeny boppers and men from the nearby Air Force base cruised up and down the pavement in hopped-up cars, looking for competition for drag-race money. It was a good Southwest night, stars glistening, moon on the rise, the sky vast and velvet; at such times, under better circumstances, a vehicle as open all-around as a Jeep was worth twenty closed Detroit sedans.

  But the Jeep wasn’t built for acceleration or speed. I couldn’t ditch Behrenman by running away from him; he had a big car with probably five times as much horsepower under the hood as he would conceivably need for any purpose short of breaking the land-speed record. Still, a freeway—particularly one going through the heart of a city with interchanges every quarter-mile—was virtually the ideal place to ditch a tail. Behrenman knew that; he was sticking much closer than is usually done—partly because he didn’t care if I spotted him, partly because he was afraid of losing us. Madonna had probably made it clear what would happen to him if he blundered.

  I swung out in the far left lane—there were three lanes in each direction—and stayed there, doing sixty-five, judging the gaps in the traffic roaring along the two lanes to my right. I had to pass four interchanges before the cars were spaced right. A glance in the mirror placed Behrenman for me, and I was glad to see he was in my lane, separated from me by one car. With a little more experience and brains, he’d have known enough to stay in the middle lane, from which it would have been easier to maneuver.

  It was simple. I waited till we were perilously close to the exit, then dodged into the center lane through a narrow gap in the long line of cars, cut sharply in front of a big semirig—earning a blat of his air horn—and squealed wobbling into the off-ramp. I had to hit the brakes hard to bring it down from sixty-five to thirty-five, and even at that we almost lifted two wheels off the ground on the sharp ramp turn. But the traffic had blocked Behrenman from getting to the right fast enough, and he would have to go on to the next exit. We had lost him.

  I drove under the freeway and got back on, going in the opposite direction from my previous heading. We went east three quarters of a mile and got off to head north. I kept an eye on the mirror but we had no company. I turned into Las Palmas at nine forty-five and found the boarded-up hideout without too much trouble—a feat accomplished only because I’d spent most of my thirty years in this town and knew the back streets by heart.

  We were going slowly enough so that Joanne could speak without fighting the wind. She said, “That was very neat.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. For my next number I whistle and the Jeep gets up on its hind legs and dances in time to the music.”

  “Are you as collected as you’re trying to make me think you are, Simon?”

  “No,” I said shortly, and turned into the gap in the high oleander hedge.

  The place was dark and silent, which meant nothing. When I turned the engine and lights off, I sat motionless long enough for him to get a good look at us from whatever crack he was using in the boarded-up windows. Then I got down and walked to the door, avoiding the broken glass easily by moonlight. The door was open, sagging. I waited outside and said, “Mike? It’s Simon. Joanne’s with me. Okay to come in?”

  No answer; no sound at all. I went inside. It was black in there, I stayed near the door and lifted my voice—possibly he was asleep. “Mike!”

  Finally I went back to the Jeep and got the flashlight from its clamp under the seat, told Joanne to wait, and went inside with the light. He wasn’t in the front room. I made my way through the rest of the place, picking a path carefully over piles of fallen ceiling plaster. After fifteen minutes I was satisfied he wasn’t there. It left me in a sour mood; I didn’t want to waste half the night tracking him down. I went back into the main room and flashed the light around once more, ready to leave; the flashlight beam picked up something out of place on the seat of the old couch and I went to have a look.

  It was a piece of paper torn off the corner of a newspaper. On the white margin was written in pencil, in a crabbed hand, C—I’m going to your place. Meet you there. Mike.

  I took the note outside, got into the Jeep and showed it to Joanne. She said, “I suppose ‘C’ is you?”

  “I can’t think of anybody else it’s likely to be. But it raises a question or two. Why my place? And where could he have got transportation from here to there? He left his car up in the foothills.”

  She said, “Something may have frightened him. That’s his handwriting, I guess, but it’s much shakier than I remember it.” She stirred, hugging herself; nights cool down fast in the desert. “Do you suppose he’s remembered something important?”

  “We’ll find out,” I replied, and pushed the starter. Might as well head home, anyway, I thought; I needed a quiet place to think and if Madonna thought we were on the run after ditching Behrenman, my house was the last place he’d look for us.

  I kept a careful eye out for surveillance on the way but spotted none. We took back streets and roads across town—the Jeep was too conspicuous. It took forty minutes to get to my dirt road, and when we passed Nancy Lansford’s lonely outpost I turned off the headlights and drove the rest of the way by moon and stars. It was no great feat, with the silver desert glowing with pale reflection.

  From a mile away I could see there were no lights on at my place, and I applauded Mike for having that muc
h sense. In some ways it doesn’t pay to have a home which is also a goddamn beacon. The view of the city from the house is marvelous; the view of the house from the city, of course, is equally distinct.

  There was no car in the yard. “He must have hitched a ride. Who with, I wonder?”

  We dismounted from the Jeep and I called out, “Mike?”

  There was no reply. Joanne looked at me. I said in a murmur, “Stay put,” and went forward, pulling the Beretta out of my hip pocket, not liking the distant sensation that had begun to crawl through me—a feeling like ice across the back of my neck. I headed for the nearest corner of the house, got into the shadows where moonlight didn’t reach and sidled along the wall toward the door.

  The screen was shut but I heard the buzz of flies heavy in a swarm, and as I got closer I saw them, hanging angrily in a knot above a thick mound on the doorstep. I took in my breath sharply and bent down to look.

  The body lay drawn up, fetal. The side of his head, above the ear and just behind the temple, was a sickening, jellied crater, faintly glistening in the starlight. Death had sucked all expression off his boyish face. The sour odor was subtle but impossible to disregard, any more than the lurching of sick spasms in my belly could be ignored. One sock, bunched, had fallen down around his ankle; the trouser leg was crushed up to the knee and the hairy leg was a spiderweb of half-scabbed blood. His left hand, visible, was twisted awkwardly, with the thumb, and index finger bent back beyond the natural possibilities.

  I rolled back his eyelid but there was no need. There wasn’t any question of his death. He had been tortured, systematically bludgeoned and lacerated. Automatically my stricken mind catalogued the evidence and calculated the method: brass knuckles, a knife and something heavy enough to cave in his head. The blood on the rest of him was ample indication that the other injuries had been sustained before the final massive blow which had, mercifully by then, killed him.

  The first I was aware of Joanne’s nearness was when I heard her begin to choke. I straightened, wheeled and got an arm around her, pushing her back away from it.

  She forced enough control of her voice to say, “It’s Mike, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, my God, Simon.” I heard a faint jangling and after a moment recognized it—the ring of the telephone in the house. It rang a second time, and stopped. My head snapped up; I stepped out into the yard and threw my glance downhill, and spotted it—the hill-crest overglow of headlights, coming up, and mingled in the glow the rhythmic flash of red and blue. Police car, with the rooftop dome light flashing.

  Joanne had one arm outstretched against the wall of the house, bracing herself, looking faint. I put sympathy aside and snapped at her: “We’ve got five minutes, maybe less. You’re going to have to act a part. Come on, snap out of it—we’ve got a lot to do and no time.”

  She stirred and blinked. “Yes. All right. What do you want me to do?”

  I told her, in a rush of words; and we did it.

  Chapter Eight

  The city patrol car, air-conditioned and overstuffed, slewed into the yard. The cop drove with more ferocity than skill; he sent a spout of dust forward when he stopped. I waited till then before I turned on lights and stepped out, holding the screen open for Joanne.

  The cop sat in the car, switched on the spotlight and swung its lancing blade of light across the hilltop until it zeroed in on the two of us, blinding us. I shaded my eyes with one hand. After a moment I heard the car door open. The spotlight switched off and the man got out: Sergeant Joe Cutter. I had scars to remember him by.

  Cutter was a wide brute, shaped like a fire plug. Hairy and heavy—maybe 225 swarthy pounds on a five-foot-ten frame, fierce and thickly muscular. His jaw was blunt, flesh thick around the lips and nose, eyes set back deep in crude massive bones. Cutter, musky and ugly as a rhino, radiated a constant force of danger like heat.

  Speaking, he revealed a chrome-hued tooth. “All right, Sy. Where is it?”

  “Where’s what?”

  “Mike Farrell.”

  “Does this look like a hotel? I don’t keep a register.” I could feel Joanne tense beside me. I didn’t look at her.

  Joe Cutter said, “Okay, then we do it the hard way.” He reached into the car and brought out a long five-cell flashlight.

  “Hold it,” I said. “Before you do any searching you can show me a piece of paper signed by somebody—and you can explain what you’re doing up here outside city jurisdiction. Since when are you working for the sheriff?”

  Joanne said spryly, “No tickee, no lookee.” Her eyes danced—too brightly. I shook my head slightly.

  Joe Cutter shook his head with an air of exasperated and disgusted patience. “Come off it, Sy. We can be friendly about this or I can get tough, whichever way you want it. You know better—this time of night I can’t get a warrant, but you make a stink and take it to court and I’ll have a warrant to show the judge with tonight’s date on it, and I’ll have some county cops to testify they gave me authority to work outside the city because the Aiello case is a joint effort, right? So why make a nuisance out of yourself? You butt out and shut your flap or I knock both of you right on your enchiladas, okay?”

  As he spoke, Cutter pushed the button of his $80 holster; the molded clamshell popped open and he lovingly lifted his .357 Magnum, not pointing it at anything in particular.

  I gave him a flat look and said, “Put that thing away. We’ve got a witness this time.”

  Cutter shook his head again. “Where’s the dead guy?”

  “What dead guy? Somebody gave you a bad tip.”

  “Sure.”

  “Tell me who tipped you and maybe we can get it straightened out.”

  “Try another one, Sy. You killed Farrell and you haven’t had time to get rid of the body.”

  I had put lights on in the house. The draw on the batteries brought the diesel generator to life. It began to thud and pound. I lifted my voice to carry above the racket: “Somebody lied to you.”

  “Nobody lies to me,” he said, walking forward. “Not even you, Sy.” Straight-faced, he gestured with the Magnum. “Let’s go inside and look, okay?”

  I gave in with an elaborate show of disgust; held the door for Joanne and went in ahead of him. Cutter went through the house with efficient speed, keeping the gun more or less pointed at us and herding us with him as he searched. Cutter wasn’t a ransacker; he had a compulsion toward military neatness; he left nothing disturbed, but didn’t miss a single place where a corpse might fit. He looked inside the refrigerator, checked the cabinets, opened every closet door and pawed through, got down to look under the couch and the bed, looked behind the Army-blanket drapes, poked his nose in every corner, even climbed on a chair to shine his flashlight into the swamp-cooler ducts.

  When he was satisfied he exploded in a few choice phrases and took us outside. We went around the house, Cutter shining the flashlight in every direction. At the back of the house he lifted the lid of the generator enclosure and aimed the flashlight beam inside. The diesel exuded noise and heat and pollutant odors. He banged the lid down and went on around the house, making the full circuit, examining the edges of the stone foundation for signs of openings. He glanced into the Jeep, then shooed us up toward the rock-polishing shack. Joanne waited until he was looking the other way before she gave me a weak grin of relief. We went into the shack and Cutter stood still a moment, sizing it up. He found the light switch and turned it on.

  The shack was cluttered with gear—workbench along one wall, most of the door occupied by tumblers driven by electric motors. The largest of the tumbler barrels was about the size of a ten-gallon keg. They rotated slowly on their tracks; the noise was soporific, a quiet swish and thud, gemstones revolving through viscous abrasive solutions of pumice and silicates. It took months to bring a tumbled stone to high polish; each stone had to be moved from coarser to finer solutions through t
he series of five tumblers.

  Cutter said, “Where do you shut this stuff off?”

  I pointed to the master switch. “Why? You expect we cut up your imaginary dead body and put the pieces inside?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said, deadpan. He opened the switch and lifted the lid on the large barrel. The polishing solution was the color of cement. He put down the flashlight, rolled up his sleeve, and plunged his hand inside. After he felt around, he withdrew his hand, shook it and looked around for something to clean himself with.

  Joanne picked up a rag and handed it to him. “Thanks,” he said absently, wiped his forearm and hand meticulously, and tossed the rag aside. He followed pattern by sealing the barrel shut and turning the machinery on.

  It was always hard to detect expressions on his immobile face but I had the feeling he was boiling with rage. It seemed a good time for it so I said, “What makes you think Mike Farrell’s dead? What makes you so sure it wasn’t Farrell himself who gave you this bum steer to keep you occupied while he gets out of the state? He probably killed Aiello and now he’s just making waves so he can get away in the confusion.”

  He gave me his hooded glance and gestured with the Magnum. “Outside.”

  He took us all around the hilltop, spending a half hour at it, walking a regular search pattern with flashlight and eyes to the ground. He didn’t find anything more than Ed Baker had found twelve hours earlier. Joanne slipped her hand into mine while we trailed along with him. Her fingers were slick with cold perspiration.

  When we circled back to the front yard Cutter’s scarlet face was composed into such a parody of indifference that I was sure he was outraged. He lifted the lid of the galvanized trash can and poked around inside with the flashlight, replaced the lid and turned to face us, playing with the gun. He was standing with one foot crushing a rose stem.

  He said, “I’ve got half a mind to run both of you in. Material witnesses.”