The Split p-7

by Richard Stark

  Rudd knew immediately the television gambit would be no good here; in a furnished room like this, this guy wouldn’t have a television set. So he said, ‘Radio.’

  The guy frowned. ‘What? What’s that?’

  ‘Radio,’ said Rudd. ‘I’m from Associated Polls, we want to know when you listen to the radio.’

  ‘Radio? I don’t listen to the radio, I just moved in here.’

  ‘We want to know,’ Rudd said, pushing it, ‘what programs you listened to on Tuesday night. Did you listen to the special -‘

  ‘Tuesday night? What about Tuesday night?’

  ‘We want to know -‘

  ‘Come on in here. Come on.’

  Rudd went in and the guy shut the door. It was a small square box of a room, badly furnished.

  The guy turned around from the door and hit Rudd with his closed fist on the side of the head. Rudd stumbled and fell over a chair, and the guy came after him and kicked him in the small of the back. ‘Who sent you?’ he said. ‘Who sent you here?’

  After a while, Rudd told him.

  Seven

  Ray Shelly was an easygoing sort. Only once in his life had he hit anyone in anger, and that was a major in the United States Army. Shelly at the time was a private in the United States Army, and in the major’s private bed, and very close to the major’s wife. The major, returning unexpectedly and finding his wife and Shelly in bed together, had taken one look at the size of Shelly and had then started to beat up on his wife instead. He got to hit her twice before Shelly flattened him. Shelly got six months stockade and a bad conduct discharge out of that, the major got a transfer to a base where his presence wouldn’t cause so many snickers, and his wife got a change-of-life baby.

  Sitting on the sofa in the living room of a guy named Fred Burrows now, Shelly thought about that time and wondered how the major was treating his kid. The kid would be eight year’s old now. Nine. No, eight.

  Parker was doing the talking for both of them, so Shelly didn’t have to waste any time listening. He and Parker had already gone through this routine lour other times, and it hadn’t come to anything yet, and he didn’t really expect it would come to anything this time. This Fred Burrows looked about as dangerous as a ladybug, soft and plump and scaredycat. He blinked a lot.

  What they were supposed to be, him and Parker, they were supposed to be law. Parker always had these identification cards, driver’s licenses, discharge photostats, credit cards, all these bits and pieces of paper he kept assembling with other people’s names on them, and when it was necessary for him and Shelly to ape law, out he came with a couple of identification cards that said police all over them. They weren’t for this city, but nobody reads a cop’s card that close.

  This was their fifth call. Whenever Feccio or Clinger or Rudd ran into somebody they couldn’t fix with the television questions, they passed the word on to Dan Kifka back at Vimorama, and Kifka passed the word on to Parker and Shelly, and Parker and Shelly went visiting in law face. The dodge was, they were investigating the murder of Ellen Canaday, and they wanted to know where this particular gismo was on Tuesday night. After they got the answer they checked it if necessary, and wound up scratching another name off the list.

  Like this boy Fred Burrows. Shelly didn’t have to listen to the questions or the answers; he already knew you could scratch Fred off the list. But Parker was going through it all anyway, just like it mattered. Parker was thorough, and Shelly recognized that was a good way to be. Not for himself, Though; he was too easygoing to be thorough.

  Parker at last gave the high-sign they were finished, and Shelly got to his feet, stretching his back and twirling his hat like any harness bull anywhere. Parker told Fred Burrows, ‘We’ll be in touch. Don’t leave town.’ Shelly scratched his nose to hide a grin, and they went on out of there, leaving Fred Burrows smiling painfully in the doorway.

  Out on the street, Parker said, ‘He’s out.’

  ‘I knew that all the time.’

  Parker shrugged, looking around. ‘We’ll go back to Vimorama,’ he said.

  ‘Sure thing.’

  They walked down to Shelly’s car, a seven-year-old Pontiac with a five year-old Mercury powerplant and Ford pickup transmission. It looked like hell, and it sounded like hell, but it also went like hell.

  Driving out to Vimorama, Parker said, ‘I don’t like the smell of it. It’s going to be one of the cop’s nine.’

  ‘We’ll know pretty soon.’

  ‘I don’t like going near those nine. What if the law grabs anybody that comes along, doesn’t just wait for me?’

  Shelly shrugged and said, ‘If it was me, I’d give myself up peaceful as could be and say I was doing it for a joke. They might have me on some kind of misdemeanor, gaining entry under false pretences’ or something like that, but that couldn’t hurt me none. I’d just wait them out.’

  Parker shook his head. ‘I just don’t like it,’ he said.

  Out at Vimorama, they took the car around on the gravel driveway to the rear of the property, where it couldn’t be seen from the highway. They got out and started crunching back across the gravel to Unit One, where Kifka was. Shelly walked on the right, Parker on the left.

  Shelly, glancing to his right, saw Little Bob Negli suddenly pop out from behind one of the cabins over there. He had a gun in his hand, a little gun, shrimp-size like himself.

  Negli shouted, ‘Shelly, move over!’

  Shelly had been starting to grin. Now he started to frown instead. ‘Bob, what the hell are you -‘

  ‘Move out of the way!’

  Then, beyond Negli, Shelly saw someone else, a young guy, heavyset like a football player, loping forward between the cabins. Everybody had a gun in his hand all of a sudden; the young guy’s hand bulged with a .45 automatic.

  Shelly shouted and dragged his own pistol out from under his coat. But Negli must have misunderstood. He shot Shelly three times.

  Eight

  After the man named Pete Rudd told him everything he wanted to know, he knocked Rudd out with his fist and got ready to leave here.

  It had been pleasurable, forcing Rudd to talk. The last time he’d felt that way, free and exalted and as strong as a redwood tree, was back in college in football season. Hitting a man was like hitting a line; exulting in your own strength and the chance to bruise and push and bull your way through.

  Rudd had been troublesome. It had taken a long while to break him down, and he worked up quite a sweat doing it. So, as always after prolonged exertion like that, he spent a while in the shower. Here, in this miserable place, the shower was in the bathroom down at the end of the hall. It wasn’t even a proper shower; he had to stand up in the tub, with a shower spigot over him and a plastic shower curtain constantly blowing inward and wrapping itself around him.

  When he got back to the room, Rudd was still out, sagging in the chair to which he’d been tied with shoe laces and strips of his own shirt.

  He packed quickly, but not hurriedly. There was no reason to hurry now. He knew what had to be done, and when it was finished he would go to Mexico as planned. He felt very peaceful now, with everything mapped out that way, and having had a good workout and a good shower afterward.

  Various things that Ellen had said to him at one time or another, things about his abilities with women, kept trying to creep into his consciousness, but he was feeling too good to let such nonsense bother him. He pushed those memories to one side, old ballast he no longer needed.

  When he was done packing, he had four suitcases, his own two filled with his clothing and other possessions, everything he owned in the world, and the two filled with money. As an afterthought he opened one of the money suitcases and took out handfuls of cash, stowing it around in his pockets. If by any chance he should be temporarily separated from his luggage, he’d still have plenty of money.

  He considered Rudd awhile, and then decided to leave him there and do nothing further to him. What was the point, anyway? No one els
e would be coming along, not for a while. And there was no need to kill this man Rudd; he wasn’t a threat. None of them were threats, only the leader, the one who’d been living with Ellen. He would follow to the ends of the earth. Yes, but kill him, and the others would all slink off like whipped dogs.

  He made two trips down to the car, carrying the suitcases. The second time, he carefully locked the room door behind him. Goodbye, room. He wouldn’t be coming back to that place.

  He drove the Ford out 12N, as Rudd had told him, and eventually saw Vimorama on the right. Seeing it, he felt his first moment of doubt; it really did look deserted. But then, going by, staring at the place, he caught a glimpse of a car parked way in the back, behind all the cabins. So Rudd hadn’t been lying.

  He couldn’t have been lying, not by then.

  He let the Ford glide on by Vimorama and stopped about a quarter mile farther down the road, where there was parking space along the verge. He walked back, feeling the guns in his pockets. The gun he’d been using up till now had only five bullets left in it, as he’d learned when he finally figured out how to get the clip out of the butt. Rudd had been carrying a gun too, a different kind, what they called a revolver. It held eight bullets and was fully loaded. With two guns now, bolstered by the feeling of strength and power, he strode rapidly back down the road toward Vimorama.

  Ahead, he saw an old Pontiac take the turn, drive in past the Vimorama sign. He quickened his pace.

  There was a gas station on the left, and then a bit of woods before Vimorama began. He walked past the gas station and then plunged into the woods.

  The trees were tall old pines, widely separated. A rust-brown mat of dead pine needles covered the ground. It was dark in under the trees, and all sounds were muffled. He took the automatic out of his right-hand topcoat pocket and walked along peering and searching, frightened in spite of himself.

  The Vimorama cabins were off to his right. He turned that way and came out from under the trees, and ahead of him were the cabins and people. A short man directly in front of him, maybe ten yards away, was facing the other way. Beyond him, possibly twenty yards farther on, walking along the gravel driveway, were two tall men, and the one on the far side was the leader, the one he wanted.

  They were all shouting at each other, and he suddenly saw he was coming into the middle of a situation he didn’t fully understand. The short man had a gun in his hand, and all at once he started shooting at the leader and the other one. The leader ducked away and the other one fell to the ground.

  Was the short man on his side? He came running forward, shouting, ‘Get him! Get that tall one!’

  The short man spun around, open-mouthed, and fired again.

  At him!

  He yelled and dove away, rolling the way he’d learned in college, bringing up at last behind a cabin, lying there awhile quivering with fear and rage.

  He was enraged at everybody, but mostly at himself. It had happened again, as it always happened, as he knew it always would happen. A gun was fired at him, and he reacted with blind instinctive panic. He lost precious seconds, lost advantages, lost control of situations, only because of this stupid panic, and it hit him every single time.

  Out of sight, the shooting was still going on. He crept around the other way, trying to see without being seen, hoping there would be some way to come up on everybody’s flank. The shooting was sporadic, it almost sounded half-hearted in comparison with movie soundtracks, and it seemed to be moving here and there all around the cabins.

  He came around the corner of the cabin and there ahead of him, looming in a cabin doorway like a Scandinavian god, was a huge naked blond man wearing nothing but a gun.

  Everyone, had guns.

  He fired first this time, three shots from the automatic, and the naked man bounced backward into the doorframe and then jacknifed forward and sprawled out on the gravel.

  Shooting. Shooting.

  It sounded like it was all at him.

  He turned and ran.

  He ran through the woods and across the gas station blacktop as the attendant there gaped open-mouthed at him, and ran full tilt along the road until he came to the Ford again. He pulled open the door on the passenger side because chat was the side he came to first, and something hit the inside of the door and made a shock wave run up his arm, and a second later he heard the sound of the shot behind him.

  He didn’t even look back to see who was shooting at him. The woods were to his right. Leaving the car door open, he turned away and went crashing and blundering in among the trees.

  Detective Dougherty could smell it in the air. Tension. Something was about to pop.

  His original list of nine names had been expanded by now, and the men still working on the Canaday case reported chat almost everyone they talked to had already been questioned by someone claiming to be from a polltaking company. The descriptions of the pollster varied too widely to be just the normal bad memory of the civilian witness; there had to be more than one man doing the questioning.

  The man who called himself Joe had friends with him, then. The others involved in the robbery at the stadium? But why would they stick their necks out for him?

  Unless what Joe was looking for was more than his own share of the loot. Unless the Canaday killer had the whole bundle.

  Dougherty could think of no other explanation. The man who had murdered Ellen Canaday had also walked off with the entire proceeds from last Saturday’s robbery. Five to eight men had been involved in that robbery, according to the best estimates they could work up, and undoubtedly all of them were still in the city, looking for the murderer of Ellen Canaday.

  It was as involuted and twisted as a Chinese puzzle. The police were looking for the Canaday killer. A group of professional bandits was also looking for the Canaday killer. And the police, to round it off, were looking for the professional bandits.

  If the Canaday killer were looking for either the police or the bandits, then everything would be tied in the ultimate knot.

  Well, they all had to start bumping into each other pretty soon. Too many people were milling around in the same restricted area; sooner or later they had to start making contact.

  It began shortly after noon, and then it came twice in rapid succession. Two men were picked up when they came to apartments of people on the list Dougherty had given Joe. It had been Dougherty’s idea to put men on duty inside the apartments instead of merely on watch outside. How would they know what they were watching for if the fake polltakers were people other than Joe?

  Well, it paid off. Two of the pollsters were nabbed within ten minutes of each other.

  But the news was as bad as it was good. Both men had tried immediately, and disastrously, to escape, and both had been shot down. One of them had apparently had some idea of shooting it out, but had died with a gun in his hand that he hadn’t had a chance to use. The other had had an accomplice in a white Chevy II with red upholstery, and had almost succeeded in getting into the car and away. One of the arresting officers fired at his legs, but did so just as the suspect was ducking, and the bullet struck him in the back instead. He was still alive when he reached the hospital, but in a coma and not expected to regain consciousness. The accomplice and the white Chevy II were being searched for.

  Also, the ambulance the gang had used in the robbery had finally been found. And, downtown, a truck with a Renault hidden inside it had drawn the attention of a patrolman after it had remained parked in one spot for nearly a week; it seemed certain the truck and Renault had had something to do with the robbery. None of the three vehicles bore a single useful fingerprint.

  The new composite drawing of Joe, done by the police artist with Dougherty’s directions, had been identified by a cashier at the stadium as one of the men engaged in the robbery, if they needed any confirmation of that.

  Then, at four-thirty, the phone on Dougherty’s desk rang, and when he picked it up it was Engel, the detective who’d taken over on the Canaday case.<
br />
  Engel said, ‘I think I’ve got something for both of us, Bill. Checking out a report on an old boyfriend of the Canaday woman’s, fresh back in town from Mexico, and the boyfriend’s gone, but he left behind a guy who just might be part of the robbery gang.’

  ‘Where is this? Is it Joe?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t look like the drawing. From the looks of things, this guy was doing the poll routine and the boyfriend tumbled and then beat the crap out of him to find out where the rest of the gang was hiding.’

  ‘The boyfriend’s the killer?’

  ‘It looks that way.’

  ‘And he’s after the gang?’

  ‘Yeah, I know. They’re supposed to be after him.’

  Dougherty said, ‘This one’s a lulu.’

  ‘Yeah. Anyway, this guy, he’s got identification says his name is Peter Rudd, he got beat up pretty bad before he decided to talk, and now all he wants to do is just keep talking. He keeps telling us where the gang is, over and over.’

  ‘He does? Where?’

  ‘Some place called Vimorama, out on —’

  ‘I know where it is. I’ll meet you there.’

  ‘Check.’

  Dougherty put in a quick call for two cars and a riot squad and ran downstairs as fast as he could go. He got to the street before the cars did and stood there fidgeting back and forth from foot to foot, quivering with impatience.

  It occurred to him he’d forgotten to ask the name of the boyfriend, the one who’d killed Ellen Canaday. But it didn’t matter. Who cared what that guy’s name was?

  The two cars came up out of the basement garage and paused for Dougherty to slip in beside the driver of the first car. ‘Vimorama,’ he said. ‘Out 12N.’

  ‘Siren?’

  ‘No. Yes, till we get to the city line. Then cut it off.’

  City line. He wasn’t even sure he had jurisdiction out at Vimorama.

  Well, the hell with that.

  The two cars screamed through the city and took the last couple of miles in silence, tearing along with the red lights flashing but no sirens sounding.