I glanced at the rearview mirror. The other car was much closer than it had been. When I'd slowed, fighting dizziness, they must have closed the gap between us. They were still too far away for accurate shooting, but even without enormous accuracy, it was shooting. And good enough, too. My eyes flicked to the bullet hole and back to the road.
Three more shots were fired in quick succession, and I heard one slam into the back of the Cad. I shoved my foot hard against the accelerator, watching the rearview mirror. We were pulling away from them. What seemed like a long, stretched-out minute went by, then the engine coughed. The car slowed, and there was another coughing sound that jerked the Cad. We slowed still more—then the engine caught and the speedometer needle began creeping up.
Elaine said, her voice twisted in her throat, “What was that?”
I licked my dry lips. “I think that last slug hit the gas tank. I'm not sure. If it did—” The engine coughed again. I looked at the gas gauge. It registered empty.
I didn't try to explain any more to Elaine. We had a few seconds, that was all, so I said, “When the car stops, I'll swing it broadside—”
“But it can't stop. They'll—”
“Listen to me! When it does, you run—away from the Cad. Down the road. Maybe you can get ... somewhere. If only there was a grove of redwoods, or—the hell with it. One thing, they can't be sure I don't have a gun, which I don't, so when we stop they'll be a little cautious, at least. Maybe you can make it.”
For a few moments she was quiet. Then she spoke again. And, surprisingly, her voice sounded almost calm, controlled. Again it was the low, throbbingly lovely voice I'd first heard on the phone—it seemed a year ago. She said, “There aren't any redwoods, but about a mile ahead there's a park or grove of trees of some kind. Maybe a lot more or less than a mile. I just remember seeing it once. Could we—I don't know. Hide there or something?”
“What kind of park? If it's a little dinky pile of—”
“No, a few acres, but with dirt roads and all.”
“If we make it, that's big enough.”
“Can we make it, Shell? Can we get that far?”
“That slug must've hit pretty low. There's still a little gas slopping around—and still slopping out—but some of it's getting to the engine. I don't—”
The engine coughed again.
Elaine said, “I think we're near...” She didn't finish, leaning forward to stare through the windshield.
And that was when the engine coughed for the last time—and died.
Chapter Nineteen
I threw the gear shift into neutral, let the Cad coast while I pressed the ignition key over, grinding the starter. It was no good. We'd had it.
The road bent to the right. We coasted around the curve doing about fifty miles an hour. And slowing.
“There it is!” Elaine pointed. “That little road there.”
I saw it. It was about a block away, just before the street curved left again, a narrow road leaving this one at right angles. Even at our reduced speed, it was going to be a narrow squeak to swing into it without skidding left, up against tree trunks visible in the car's lights—especially with one hand on the wheel. But I wasn't going to slow down, and there was a good reason.
When we'd hit that bend in the road, the lights of the car behind us had disappeared from the rearview mirror. For a few more seconds that car would be out of our sight—and we also would be out of theirs. I held my right hand far over on the wheel's left, eased it around and then jerked it the rest of the way. We skidded into the road, almost into those tree trunks, but straightened out in time. The dirt road went straight ahead for well over a hundred yards, then turned.
I shoved in the light switch and we coasted forward in darkness. I didn't have to tell Elaine this time; she was looking behind us. I'd made the sliding turn at close to fifty miles an hour, but that sharp turn had slowed us almost to a stop; we were making less than twenty now, the needle dropping.
“They went by,” Elaine said. For some reason she was whispering.
“They'll be back. When they see the road empty ahead of them, they'll find this turnoff. But it gives us a little time.”
The Cad was barely moving. I eased to the right of the narrow road and swung the wheel left, putting on the brakes. The road wasn't completely blocked, but at least another car couldn't pass in a hurry.
I should have felt exhilarated that we'd made it to here, but I wasn't. I had been able to see in the headlight's glare that this “park” wasn't at all what I'd hoped it would be. It was little more than an area of widely separated trees, mostly open space. I hadn't seen any place where two people could duck—except behind a tree, which was virtual suicide under the circumstances. So it looked as if all we could do would be to run like hell. But I knew those guys behind us could run faster. Certainly faster than Elaine, and I wasn't about to leave her now.
Oddly, I felt quite calm. As the Cad stopped moving and I started to open the door and leap out, through my mind were running the things that had happened so far, all the close squeaks. I'd had everything come at me from knives to dynamite, from guns to...
All of a sudden a burst of energy and adrenalin and probably eighteen things I never heard of slammed into my bloodstream and lit up my brain like a torch.
Dynamite.
The dynamite bundle I'd taken from under the Cad's hood was still in the luggage compartment. Still there exactly as I'd found it, electric detonating cap and wires still attached. And in the trunk, too, was plenty more wire—not the most perfect for what I had in mind, maybe, but it would carry an electric current. I threw the door open and slid out, grabbing the car keys in my right hand. I shouted words at Elaine as I jumped to the rear of the car and got the trunk open, grabbed the four dynamite sticks and the other coil of wire near it, raced to raise the Cad's hood. I couldn't explain it well, or fully, but I gave her the general idea.
When I'd spliced the extra wire lengths quickly, even sloppily, to the wires already in place on the detonating cap, then bent over the fender to attach the ends of my additional wire lengths to the ignition leads, I said to her, “They'll have to come up this road. With just a little more luck I can blow some of them to hell. Stop their car and shake them up, at least. So go on, honey. Run. Run, damn it!”
She was shaking her head. I looked back toward the road and saw a glow hitting the trees; a car was coming from the direction in which Navarro and his chums had disappeared. Maybe it was a different car. I didn't believe it.
Elaine, still shaking her head, said, “You just turn the key and it will go off?”
“You bet it will go off. Get out of here.”
“How can you turn the key and throw the dynamite and all without killing yourself?”
“I'm not going to kill myself. That's up to those bast—buzzards. I just said I'd throw it. But I'll plant it in the road and come back or—I don't know. Don't worry about it.”
Everything was set, the last connection made. I stepped back from the car, the four sticks and added coil of wire in my hand.
“I'll do it,” Elaine said.
“What?”
“I'll turn the key.”
“You'll beat it, and—”
“No.” Her face was white and frightened, eyes scared. But she finished, her lips quivering. “I'll turn it. Maybe after ... you can run to them and—get a gun or something.” She gasped. “There they are! Oh, Shell, there they are.”
That car was slowing, starting to turn in toward us.
I leaned in through the Cad's window and shoved the key into the ignition. As I did, the approaching car's headlights fell full on us. The twin beams hit us like a blow.
Well, they'd seen us now. Seen us both.
Elaine was already in the Cad, sliding under the wheel.
“Okay,” I said, and my voice was tired. I felt as if my blood were running out of me, melting into the ground at my feet. “It doesn't make much difference now, I guess. All you hav
e to do is turn the key. Don't turn it until you mean for this stuff to go off.”
The car had stopped. I guess when they'd spotted us, Navarro had braked, wondering what the score was, why we were still in sight. He might not realize that one slug had hit the Cad's gas tank; and he couldn't possibly know I was unarmed. For all those boys could know, I had half a dozen guns in the car.
They were less than a hundred yards away, and as I looked at them, they started slowly forward again. So I walked down the road to meet them, like an imbecilic Western marshal, asking for it.
I guess the apparent insanity of what I was doing puzzled them. The car came several yards closer, then stopped. The lights went out. I didn't wonder why right then; I ran forward, paying out wire from the coil in my hand. It stretched a total of twenty yards at most from the Cad. I dropped the dynamite on my right, at the edge of the road, turned and ran back toward the Cad. Maybe, I thought, maybe I could make it back there in time to do the job myself.
Then the other car's lights came on again. Much closer this time.
I suppose the shock of seeing the two of us in the glare of their headlights had worn off—and they surely knew, finally, that if I'd had a gun I would have sent half a dozen slugs at them by now.
I stopped when the lights hit me, turned my back to the Cad—and to Elaine, still a few yards behind me. As I turned, I stepped sideways toward the left of the road. Not only closer to a couple of spindly trees, but a little farther from the dynamite. I raised my right hand in the air, started lifting my left one.
“Scott!” Navarro leaned out the window on the driver's side and yelled my name.
“Yeah, Navarro. Hold it up. I—I've got something to tell you.”
He laughed. “Stay right there, Scott.” He could easily see that I didn't have a gun in my hand, and every fraction of a second I thought a bullet was going to slam into me. I couldn't quite keep my feet from moving, even though I tried to stay still. But I kept inching a little more toward the left of the road, almost as if my legs were acting on their own, without any instruction from me.
“I said stay there. Freeze.” Navarro's voice was very tough now. Masterful. He wasn't afraid of any one-armed shot-up man without a gun.
He got out of the car, said something to the men inside, then stepped toward me. As he came closer, the other men also got out. There were two of them, but the only one I could recognize so far was Navarro. Behind me, maybe fifteen feet, was my Cad and Elaine. I'd made it about forty feet or more from the dynamite before turning around. And Navarro's car was on past the dynamite at least another ten or fifteen yards. Too far away.
Navarro walked toward me. A gun gleamed in his hand. It was a big one, a .45 automatic. A slug from Navarro's .45 would do the job, even if it hit a whisker, the shape I was in. I was wobbling on my feet, fighting back dizziness again.
I ground my teeth together, not even breathing. Navarro hadn't stopped grinning. I made myself stand still while I got my left arm over my head, but I never did anything harder. The other two men walked toward me, following Navarro. They were both together, Navarro quite a bit ahead of them. Only one of the two others held a gun, and it looked as if Joe wanted to handle this job himself. I wondered why he hadn't done it already.
In a way, he told me.
“Thought you could push me around, huh? Slug me, kick hell out of me. Well, Scott, how does it look now?”
My voice wasn't a powerful bark when I answered, not at all threatening. “Not—so good.”
He was still grinning, moving gracefully forward. He walked past the dynamite. I closed my eyes, sweat coming out my pores like water from faucets. I wondered if I were going to crumple up and fall down in the road.
Navarro kept coming, stopped ten or twelve feet from me. He couldn't miss from there. And there wasn't a chance in hell that I could get to him. But the other mugs were still coming, too, though they hadn't come as fast as Joe. Half a dozen more steps and they'd be right where I wanted them. If I lasted that long. If only Elaine ... I didn't think about it.
Navarro, standing with his feet apart, said, “Yeah, you're a tough one, you bastard. But you made a mistake when you messed with me. I wanted to tell you. I wanted you to know it was coming—from me. But right now, tough man, you get it.”
He pushed the gun in his hand a couple inches toward me, and his whole face tightened.
I said the words in a rush. “Look at your feet, Navarro. At those wires. They're wired to dynamite, Joe. Dynamite.”
The others were practically alongside the four sticks when I spoke. Navarro probably didn't believe me, but he must have thought he had plenty of time. He glanced at the road, and his eyes fell on the wires. From the moment when he'd pushed the gun forward until now, only three or four seconds had passed—that was all.
Navarro's eyes stayed on the wire long enough—just long enough for me to move. While his eyes were off me, his gun wavered a little. I called on every ounce of strength in me and stepped fast to my left, bending my leg and then shoving hard. At the same moment I yelled, “Now, Elaine!” and leaped through the air. I could see the ground blurred before my eyes. It took only a fraction of a second, but a hundred things seemed to flicker before my mind—I wondered if Navarro was pulling the trigger, if Elaine would turn that key, and whether anything would happen even if she did.
But even before my right shoulder hit the ground, it happened.
The roar seemed to fill the world, there was a crack like hell exploding and an ugly glare swelled suddenly and died. Something grabbed my body, hurled me forward and flipped me over. Maybe I heard a scream, maybe I didn't. I hit the ground, but then felt nothing at all.
I was digging at dirt under my fingers and saying something. My ears rang, and my whole body tingled. I must have gone clear out, but it could have been for only a few seconds because dust was still swirling in the road behind me when I managed to twist my head around and look.
One of the car's headlights still glowed eerily through the boiling dust, like the eye of a locomotive, but the other had been blasted out. In that swirl of dust two men, or what was left of two men, twitched. But even as I watched, the movement stopped. Near me, Joe Navarro lay flat on his face in the dirt road, both arms stretched out in front of him. His gun lay two or three yards from him. His arms were moving, and as I looked at him, he tried to raise his head.
I got to my knees and waddled toward him, that ringing sound rising and falling in my ears like surf. I fell once, but kept going on my knees until I reached him. He moved his head, got it off the dirt and turned to stare at me when I was a yard away.
He was stunned, his face white with shock and his eyes wide, unbelieving. Fear swam in his eyes, too. On my knees, I reached him, straightened up as much as I could, raising my right arm high. He shrank back a little as I hit at the side of his neck, cutting at him with the thick edge of my palm. The blow landed, and landed where I wanted it to, but all it did to Navarro was knock him down again. He kept moving, tried to roll over.
The blow must have had all the force of a teen-age girl slapping her boy friend, but it was the best I could do. So I did it again. I still didn't know if he was out, but he stopped moving. I looked back down the road at the two other men. At bloody horror.
Four sticks of dynamite, that close to men, doesn't just poke neat holes in them. They both were dead, but there wasn't anything neat about it. Dynamite rips and rends, tears off limbs and shatters skulls, blasts out eyes, hurls flesh from bone.
As I turned toward Navarro again I saw Elaine get out of the car and start toward me.
“Go back!” I yelled. “Don't come down here.”
“Is it—are you all right?”
“Yes. Get back in the car.”
She turned, took two steps toward the Cad and stopped. Slowly, not as if she fell, but as if she couldn't go farther, she sank to the road. She sat there, her back to me, and bent her head forward into her hands.
I looked Navarro over.
Something had been driven into his hip, gashing through cloth and flesh, but otherwise he seemed unhurt—except for shock and the buffeting from the explosion and compressed wall of air that had slammed into him. But he didn't look like a man who was going to die. Not, at least, from dynamite.
I rolled him onto his back. Blood had run from his nose. He groaned. In a minute he'd be coming to. And it occurred to me that even Navarro, if he thought he was dying, might talk as long as he could, getting the crimes off his conscience, trying to wash the darkness from his soul.
I smeared that red-stained ugliness from his nose all over his face, the front of his shirt, onto his hands. Then I got his automatic, and waited.
His eyelids fluttered. He moaned, licked his lips, and then stopped the movement of his tongue, horror and sickness mingling on his face as his eyes opened wide. I gave him plenty of time.
Then I said, “Too bad, Joe.”
“Get—me a doctor.”
“A doctor, huh? Aren't you the guy who just started to shoot me with this?” I waved the cocked .45. “The guy who was so happy about the chance to kill me?” I tried to make it sound tough, but my voice was thick.
“I wouldn't have done it. I just—” He stopped speaking, rolled his eyes down to the front of his shirt, looked wild-eyed at the blood covering him. He raised both his hands and stared in horror at their wet redness.
Then his head flopped back onto the dirt, his hands fell limply. I thought he'd fainted, but he was still conscious. “Doctor,” he whispered. “Please. Doctor.”
“It's too late for that, Joe.”
“You mean ... I'm gonna die?”
I didn't tell him what I meant.
He said, “Don't let me die. Don't, don't...”
“Get the whole thing off your chest, Joe. From the beginning.”
He kept asking for a doctor, his voice growing weaker. I was afraid he'd really kick off on me. Men have died when there was nothing wrong with them—when their fraternity brothers, for example, “cut” their arms with ice and dripped water into a pan, telling them their blood was pouring from them. They've died with all the symptoms of actually bleeding to death—and Joe was getting weaker and weaker.
Over Her Dear Body Page 19
