When I didn’t answer, the old geezer told me, “Now, you come along five, six years back, I could of found you as many flags as the Yew-nited Nations, over to the airport. Had them a row of flags and pennants there, before the airport went broke. No flags now, though. Just the hangar and that old admin building a-sitting out there in the Tidewater wind, no planes, no people, no phone even. Control shack coming to pieces now, you bet, with a raggedy old windsock on top of it falling apart like your old Aunt Maggie’s red wool drawers.” He sucked in his dental plate, giving me an old man’s grin.
At first what he said hadn’t registered. Then I looked at him, and the map. I grinned back at him foolishly as it dawned. I stood up fast, spilling my coffee.
“Hey, mister! Be ten cents.”
I tossed a dollar on the counter and ran outside.
With a raggedy old windsock on top of it falling apart like your old Aunt Maggie’s red wool drawers.
A flag on a high pole, flapping in the wind.
A windsock on the control shack.
As I sprinted across the wet shell parking lot to the Chrysler, a car chased its headlights along Benning Road, heading for the Anacostia River bridge. For an instant the lights raked me as the speeding car hit the turn in Benning Road near the truckstop, spewing wings of water at the night. Then I got behind the wheel of the Chrysler.
Haycox Airport. I felt like singing. It had to be Haycox Airport.
I started driving.
Shell Scott
Shock pulled my foot from the accelerator.
The man running to the car, leaping into it, was Chet Drum.
I stared through the open window, sleet whipping in against my face, saw him start the car, a new Chrysler, rip into the road and roar down it—away from me. Automatically I started swinging in a U-turn, hit the brakes barely in time as headlights loomed before me, yanked the wheel back as the Chevy slid on the wet asphalt. But half a minute later I got turned around, tromped on the gas and headed after him.
My fingers were wrapped tight around the wheel. If the crooks were meeting around here, they naturally couldn’t have the meeting without that guy. So South on Ben was South on Benning Road—and with a little luck Chet Drum would lead the way for me. Sudden exhilaration lacked up my pulse.
I passed several cars in the next mile, but none of them was Drum’s Chrysler. As I swung out to pass the next one I saw a narrow road on my left, leading off from Benning. It was the only turnoff I’d seen so far. I kept going until I was sure he’d either turned there or was so far ahead I’d never catch him. I swore, pulled to the right of the road, whipped around and headed back, swung into the narrow turnoff with tires skidding. If I’d lost him, if he’d gone ahead and out of sight, then I’d had it, really had it. Everything would be over by the time I found Ragen and the rest—if I ever did.
Soon, ahead and on my right, shadowy, even blacker than the night, long and low, a building loomed. Ahead of me light glinted faintly, on something else. As I got close I saw that it was a car—the Chrysler, Drum’s. That settled it. In that long low building the gang must be meeting; all the big and little hoods would be there now.
I stopped behind the Chrysler, got out and looked inside the car as cold rain pelted me. It was empty, but Drum couldn’t be far away now. I grinned, took out my Colt and turned, eyes squinted against the rain and wind. Near me something moved. Shock rippled through me. The light was faint, but not so faint that I couldn’t see the man and his features clearly enough. It was Chet Drum.
Those features had been burned into my mind with acid during these last miserable days, and all the boiling gripe in me suddenly erupted. He said something, but the wind swept his words away. I had my gun pointed at his heart, and for a long second I held it on him, then the tension drained from my hand and from the finger on my Colt’s trigger.
I could see his hands—empty. He wasn’t armed.
I didn’t want to shoot him, anyway. I wanted to get Drum, and get him good, but I wanted to do it with my hands. I could still see Drum swinging that gun at me there beneath the Blue Jay cabin, feel his fist bounce off my face.
I slapped the Colt back into its holster, dug in my feet and jumped toward him. He’d been standing apparently flatfooted only a few yards from me, and I thought I had him. But he wasn’t quite as flatfooted as it had appeared. He moved.
He moved in a hell of a hurry—and the wrong way. Instead of making a big leap to the side he stepped forward and a little to his left, bending, raising a big fist.
I ducked.
At least, that was the idea.
Chester Drum
It was less than two miles from the truckstop to the turnoff that led to the abandoned airport. I made it in less than two minutes, cut my headlights and drove slowly along the potholed secondary road. Pretty soon the low-pitched whine of wet asphalt gave way to the higher-pitched whine of wet concrete. I had driven off the road. I was driving across the airport tarmac now.
And then, crouched against the night, I saw the building.
It was long and low and I could barely make it out in the darkness. Curved roof of a hangar at one end. Flat roof at the other.
I pulled up about fifty yards beyond it. Sleet rattled on the roof of the Chrysler as I killed the engine. I got out with a flashlight and my .44 Magnum—and heard the unmistakable flapping sound of the tattered windsock.
Lighting the flash and cupping my hand over it, I walked across the tarmac. I could feel the stubble of dead weeds in the cracks where the concrete had buckled.
I counted eight cars parked between my Chrysler and the airport building. A gathering of the clan, I thought. The Brotherhood bigshots and their thugs, come to cut the pie of trucking across the continent. And they had Hope in there. Glasses and Rover had taken her, along with the Frost papers.
I cut the flashlight and went close to the building. It was rectangular, over a hundred feet long and maybe forty feet wide. At one end was the great corrugated metal overhead door of the hangar with a small personnel door at its base on the left side. The small door had a rusted lock on a rusted hasp. A couple of jolts from the butt of the Magnum ought to take care of that, but then what? It was utterly dark on that side of the building. I got down on my hands and knees. There was a crack under the hangar door. No light seeped through.
Walking some more, I found another metal door on the long side of the building facing the tarmac. I didn’t have to get down on my hands and knees to see the light under that one. And a few yards from it, fronting on the tarmac, I could barely make out the waist-high cyclone fence. If I’d ever had any doubts about Haycox Airport, that dispelled them. This was the place all right.
Another car, its headlights dark, came rumbling over the secondary road and across the tarmac. I couldn’t see it yet. Running in a crouch, I went through the gate in the cyclone fence and out toward the parked cars. Whoever it was, I had to take him out of the play before I found myself fighting a war on two fronts.
The car parked near my Chrysler, and a man got out. A big guy, at least my size. He was facing the Chrysler. I gripped the Magnum tighter. His back looked as big as the side of a barn. I felt my finger tighten involuntarily on the trigger. I had never shot a man from behind, and never in cold blood. But Hope was in there.
Common sense ended the moral battle for me. I couldn’t use the Magnum. They’d hear it inside. I’d have to take this guy out with my bare hands, whoever he was. Even using the Magnum as a club, struggling with him, it might go off. I thrust it into one pocket of my trenchcoat, the small flashlight into the other.
Then he turned around.
Less than five yards separated us now. I couldn’t see his face very clearly, but I could see how the driving rain and sleet had plastered his white hair to his skull.
I was looking at Shell Scott.
He recognized me at the same instant. He mouthed my name hoarsely, but without surprise. He had a revolver in his right hand. He could empty it at me befo
re I reached for the Magnum. Then he looked behind me at the dark bulk of the airport building. I saw his teeth set in a grimace or a grin.
“Sentry duty, Scott?” I said. “You’re a little tardy.” It sounded only a little like my voice. I was staring at his gun. Staring at death.
He put the gun away and charged across the few yards that separated us. I met him halfway, without time to wonder about the gun. I missed with a left and he countered it with a right that rasped my ear as it went by. He was big and fast, and he knew at least one of the secrets of unarmed defense. He kept moving, his head bobbing, his wide shoulders making arcs in the rain.
And he could counterpunch, which is another of the secrets. I landed with a left jab. It snapped his head back. It is supposed to do that, and get him off balance. It did not get him off balance. The jab was a pretty good one, crisp and fast, but he countered with his right, hooking it hard, before I could draw the left hand back. That right hand rocked me. I felt my knees go rubbery.
I had a fight on my hands.
TWO PRIVATE EYES OUT OF FOCUS
Tidewater, Maryland, 10:25 P.M., Sunday, December 20
Shell Scott
I didn’t duck quite fast enough. Not the first time or the second time or the third time, but somewhere along in there Drum’s fists stopped battering my face and chest and I staggered back a couple of steps. I’d landed several good ones on him, too, during the flurry, and his face was marked.
He was bent forward slightly, both hands held easily before him, chin bent down toward his chest. It was a pretty big chin. Pretty big chest too, for that matter. He was big all over, and he looked tough, but that was fine with me. It meant he could take more punishment before going out, and I wanted him to take plenty before I finished ruining him,
We both stepped forward at the same time. I feinted with a short left and he looped a hook at me. I blocked the blow neatly, catching it on my right forearm, and leaned into a left jab. It was a good one. It was a hard, jolting left with plenty of steam behind it, and I was steaming more than normally now.
The blow landed on his big chin and I waited for him to fall down unconscious, perhaps groaning slightly.
“That one was for slugging me at Blue Jay, Drum,” I said through my teeth.
He wavered, like a tree in a gale, pivoted peculiarly, and something landed on my left ear. I think it was a rock in his fist. That bastard had hit me with a rock. I stumbled, sort of lost my balance, and went down.
Somebody had turned out the faint light completely, then brightened it slowly as if by turning a rheostat. Drum was stepping toward me and I was startled to see that no rock was in his fist.
I rolled aside, looped my right heel behind his left one, kicked hard at his knee with my left foot. It got him. When my foot landed I jerked backward with my right heel and his leg suddenly went out from under him. He changed direction, just as suddenly, and went down. He landed on the solid concrete and it seemed to shake. That was okay; so did he seem to shake.
We both started scrambling to our feet and he said, “Blue Jay? What did you and Ragen expect? Rewards?”
Me and Ragen. That was a laugh. I had scrambled this guy’s brains already. I got to my knees, and then onto my feet. Before knocking him down again—or had I knocked him down? The last half minute or so seemed a little jumbled. But before knocking him down, or down again, whichever it was, I said, “Just to refresh your memory, Drum, your pal Ragen is the next guy I’m going to mangle. Right after I finish with you.”
We were both on our feet now, panting. There appeared to be a lot of blood on him. That seemed swell to me, until I remembered that some of it was probably my blood.
He said, between pants, “Why, you simple sonofabitch, I’m a special investigator for the Hartsell Committee.”
“Sure. You used that gag before.” His language didn’t please me. In fact, nothing about this ape pleased me. I said, “With that mouth of yours, I can’t understand how you’ve kept all your teeth this long,” and moved in on him. But instead of stepping back, he moved toward me. I launched a hard left at his chin.
It got a little bit confused there for a while. But he seemed to get up more slowly this time. That’s the way it looked to me. I sat there on the concrete on my tired old butt and watched him get up. And he wasn’t moving like any spring chicken now. No, sir, he moved like an old man. I was beating hell out of the bastard.
He said, “Come on, you bastard. Get up off your butt.”
“You come down here, you bastard. Just get a little closer and I’ll tear you limb from...” It didn’t sound right. But if he tried to kick me in the head, I knew exactly how to grab his foot and send him flying around like a propeller. I know all the tricks. Right then, though, I wondered why he didn’t at least try to kick me in the head. Most of the hoods and slobs I tangle with will try practically anything. Kicking heads is one of the first things they think of. I felt as if he’d kicked me in the head, but he hadn’t used anything but his fists so far. It seemed—well, out of character.
But this Drum slob was standing up there sort of dancing around. At least, that’s probably what he thought he was doing. He moved his feet a little, hands up in front of him, stumbled and went down on one knee, then struggled up again. He was a mess.
Well, if he wasn’t going to fight fair, I’d have to get up. I sprang to my feet. Maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but I did get up. Drum stepped toward me, lips pulled back from his teeth. He wasn’t pulling them back on purpose, that’s just the way they went now.
Like a fool, he led with his right. I ducked into it and didn’t even feel it. I got up again and this time when he swung that fool right hand I was ready for it. His fist scraped past my ear and I hammered a left and right into his gut, then stepped aside as he swung a fist up at my chin. The uppercut missed, and I landed a good one on the side of his jaw.
He reeled clear around in a circle and I thought for an empty moment that he wasn’t going down this time either. But down he went. Slowly, maybe, with much resistance and a great lack of willingness, but down.
I stood over him, dancing about, and said, “You might as well just stay down there this time, Drum. You’ve had it. I know nearly every move you’ve made, anyhow. I know you were in on that Blue Jay job. I’m the guy who almost grabbed you then, remember. A couple minutes sooner and I’d have shot all you kidnapers and taken Frost back to Alexis.”
What was I saying? The words came out oddly, as if in pieces. And bells were ringing. In my head, they were ringing. All sorts of bells, big bells and little bells, even some cracked bells. It was almost beautiful. But I stopped dancing. I was pretty tired of dancing. In fact, I was pretty damn tired of everything.
Chester Drum
Rain and sleet pelted my face and I could taste salty blood in my mouth. If Scott was as fresh, now, as the flowers in May, he might have finished me. But I had hurt him too. He waited, panting, snuffling blood back into his nostrils, I moved around him, seeking an opening. I found one, and hooked his left ear. Felt the hard jolt of it in my knuckles and heard the meaty splat of bone against flesh.
But all Scott did was sidestep and plant himself and drive a battering ram into my solar plexus. Then he fell to one knee on the tarmac, as if my left hook had had a delayed fuse action. I looked down at him, and then I looked straight at him because I doubled over telling myself, breathe, breathe, you damn fool, while my diaphragm refused to move under my lungs.
My head rested on his shoulder. The rain and the sleet and the wind were far away. He cuffed at my ribs and kidneys weakly. Then I smelted the brackish tidewater, and I was breathing again, and Scott’s blows became more lusty. We straightened and leaned on each other. I tried to tie his arms up. He tried to tie up mine.
“What the ... hell were you babbling about Blue Jay?” I gasped against his ear. “You think I was sightseeing there?”
“You were in on the Frost snatch,” he gritted as we clinched and leaned our weight agai
nst each other.
“I was in on the Frost snatch?” I shouted. “You simple tool, is that why your buddies slugged me coming down the stairs?”
“My buddies?”
His rage and my indignation, or maybe it was the other way around or maybe it was both, got our hands loose. We broke the clinch. We glared at each other, sucking air through torn lips. My lungs were on fire. His guard was low and I went in over it. But that raised my hands and he went in under them. The same battering ran hit my abused solar plexus. I sat down hard.
But Scott was on his duff by then too—leaning forward with his head dangling. Get up and finish him, I thought. Get up and finish him. I tried. The only place it must have showed was on my face. For a moment we both just sat there on the tarmac.
“Soft?” I said.
He made it to his feet, wobbled a few seconds and launched himself at me. I managed to roll over. He went down on his face and I rolled back on top of him. Had a satisfying moment when I pushed his face against the wet concrete.
Then he twisted free and fought clear with arms like the sails of a windmill in a storm. I felt the concrete against my back. Scott was using me as an entrenching tool, trying to dig his way through it I grabbed the lapels of his coat. Something ripped. I did a flailing kickup with my legs. Scott went away. Then we scrambled toward each other on hands and knees, and then both of us got up. More slowly this time. Each time more slowly.
I put all my weight behind a right. It landed cleanly but lacked snap. It was the weight more than the blow which sent Scott down again. That’s it, I thought, waiting, panting raggedly. He can’t get up again. He’s all through,
Only he got up like a quarrel shot from a crossbow. He was mad. He was mad enough to pick up the Chrysler and throw it at me. At least that’s what it felt like. What it was, was a left hook with shoulder and body-pivot behind it. And what it did was hit the hinge of my jaw cleanly on the right side.
Down I went again.
Double in Trouble (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 25
