Have Gat—Will Travel

by Richard S. Prather

  "I told you to beat it," he said.

  "What's the matter, Chuck?" I asked him. "She right? Maybe you don't want her to hear this."

  He shrugged, staring at me.

  "Elysian Park," I said. He just kept looking at me. "Picnic on the sixteenth. That's one time."

  "So I saw her. So what? You think I'm about to say so to a lousy slewfoot when there's so much heat in the papers? I got my reasons, and they're not your business."

  "I know your reasons. You read the papers, Chuck, so you know about the young guy that got killed." I grinned. "Only he didn't get killed. He's in the hospital. Talking."

  All that happened was that he paused a moment, then seemed to get angrier. "I don't know what you're driving at."

  The blonde, Lucille, stood near us now. "You stupid man," she twanged. "You're talking about the girl that got raped." She said it like two words: rape-ed. "My golly, why you askin' Chuckie for? Why'n't you ask me already?"

  Her hands were on her hips, and if she had still been wearing her shoulder bag, she'd have been quite a sight; but the bag was on the couch. Even so, she was something to see.

  "What does that mean?" I said.

  "I'm not so dumb; you're bullyin' Chuckie about it, ain't you? Well, Chuckie and me, we was together last night. Ain't that right, honey?"

  He hesitated, then said, "That's right, sweetheart." He looked at me. "You satisfied? Or do you want to land on your butt again?" Lucille giggled.

  If Lucille were telling the truth, Chuck had a tasty alibi — but I was almost sure she was lying. For one thing, Samson had told me Chuck couldn't account for his time between eight and ten.

  I said, "How, about, say, from eight to ten last night?"

  "Oh, stop it, snooper. I'm gonna —"

  He didn't get to tell me what he was going to do, because Lucille said, "Eight to ten? Six to twelve, you mean." She squeezed Chuck's arm and said, "Chuckie was with me, I told ya." She glared at me with a very unpleasant look on her painted face. "You want details already?"

  Chuck opened the door and jerked his head. Half a dozen of the young guys walked over and stood in the doorway. I suddenly felt hemmed in, even with the gun in my pocket. I had a hunch I was leaving, one way or another — but I wanted to talk to the blonde. Alone. I wanted to ask her more about last night, and a fat roll of dollars might help her tell the truth. She acted like a gal you could buy almost anything from.

  Chuck said, "Out, Slewfoot." Then he turned and spoke to the kids, "You want to take him, pallies?" The nasty rumble from them meant they'd like that very much.

  While Chuck's back was to me, I caught the platinum blonde's eye, jerked my head toward the front of the house. Her eyes got puzzled. I turned as Chuck grabbed my arm and yanked me toward the door, toward the kids waiting for me.

  They were waiting — and ready. I saw a couple of knives, some brass knucks, and one kid, my pal Shorty, held a chunk of pipe. I slammed a foot on the floor, stumbled, but caught my balance and jerked out the .38. When I'd first come into this place I'd been leery about pulling a gun on a bunch of kids; I wasn't any longer.

  The nearest punk was only a couple of feet away and I pointed the gun at his belly, ready to use if I had to. He must have realized it, because he backed up in a hurry, banging into the kids behind him. "All of you, back — and fast," I said. I looked at Chuck. "Tell them to move, Chuckie."

  He looked from me to the kids and I pointed the gun at him. It was quiet enough now so that he heard me cock the hammer, and when he still hesitated, I lifted the gun barrel over his head and fired a shot into the ceiling. The roar was a violent sound in the small room and the smell of burned powder hung in the air. The kids moved back from the doorway.

  "Go on, Chuck," I said. "I'll put the next one lower if I have to. Out ahead of me."

  He glared for half a second, face dark, then jerked his head and went through the door into the front room, followed by the blonde. I went after them and kept the gun pointed at Chuck. "One funny move, Chuck — from anybody — and you get it first. After you, your pals get it. And, believe me, I'll enjoy it."

  I tried to watch them all as I walked to the door. When I reached it I said to Chuck, "Maybe you've got more sense than these punk kids. So maybe you'd better make sure none of your pals stick a head out after me."

  He glared some more but didn't speak. I went out, waited a minute to make sure nobody followed me, then walked away from the house. The street was dark; three of the streetlights had been broken and for half a block there was only dim illumination. I walked to the sidewalk and twenty feet toward the corner waited a few feet this side of the alley. Five minutes passed. Three times cars drove down the street, lights splashing on me as I waited. I began to think the blonde either didn't get it when I jerked my head, or else she hadn't wanted to get it. Then I saw movement at the side of the house and she was walking toward me, her platinum hair visible in the dimness.

  She stopped near me. "What is it?"

  I was blunt. "What's your price to tell me the truth about last night?"

  For a moment she didn't speak; then she said, "Damn!"

  Light flashed in front of the house as the door opened. Chuck came through it fast and sprinted toward us. I thought he was going to keep coming and slam into me when he spotted us, and I got ready to give him the edge of my palm across his throat, but he stopped a yard away, his chest heaving.

  He spoke to the blonde. "You didn't tell me you wanted some air," he said. He added, "Sweetheart." His voice sounded funny, tight. "You forgot your bag, sweetheart."

  I noticed then that he had one hand in his coat pocket, but her brown leather bag was in his other hand. She reached for it quickly but he pulled it away. "I'll carry it for you. Back to the house, sweetheart."

  I thought he'd come out here to bust me one, but surprisingly he paid no attention to me. He stuck the bag under his arm, then grabbed her wrist and they started back. But before they turned I got a good look at her face. It was almost as white as her hair. She was scared silly.

  They went inside the club while I wondered what was screwy. I could understand Chuck's concern, and her fright, if she'd been lying about being with him last night. But something about it was peculiar; that talk about her bag, for one thing. And she'd been too scared. I turned and started walking toward the corner. At the alley I angled out to the curb, playing it safe. There was something wrong that I hadn't tumbled to yet. I almost had it; it was taking shape in my mind when I heard a shout behind me.

  "Hey, Slewfoot!"

  I stopped. Chuck walked rapidly up to me. "Tell you something," he said, lips tight against his teeth. He looked nasty, not normal. I put my hand on the Colt in my pocket as he moved around me until the street was behind him. "I'm gonna have to fix you, man," he said. "Gonna fix you good now, man."

  He sounded crazy, and I started to take the gun from my pocket, wondering why he'd circled around me. Suddenly I realized that now the alley was at my back. I started to turn — and heard the scrape and rustle of movement in the darkness behind me. I spun around, yanking up the .38, and I saw the rat-faced kid and his pal almost upon me, the short one with something in his hand, raised above his head.

  His hand swung down toward me and I started to jerk away, but Chuck's big fist slammed against my head from behind and shoved me forward. Just enough. The descending club hit my head a glancing blow and I fell to my knees, stunned. It seemed to take a long time for me to fall; I barely felt the jar as my knees hit the cement. I tried to move, raise the gun, and couldn't. Something jerked me over and hurled me onto my back; a foot kicked the gun from my hand. I saw Chuck's savage, contorted face above me as his fist slammed against my chin and my head cracked into the cement beneath me. In the moment before blackness swept over me, the coldness of sudden fear slid into my brain as I saw the insane and bestial features above mine, and thought of that inhuman face above Pam's face, and knew the man was crazy enough to kill. . . .

  Someone was sh
aking me. At first my eyes wouldn't focus; pain throbbed in my skull. Then I saw the face of a patrolman bending over me. "You all right?" he was saying over and over.

  I sat up slowly, looked around. "What happened?" I said.

  "I came around the corner in my prowl car, saw these guys in my lights. I yelled at them as I stopped my car. They ran down the alley here. I chased them, but they got away. I came back to see if you were all right."

  "I think I'm okay." I managed to get to my feet, leaned against the alley's brick wall, nauseated. "How long was I out?"

  "Couple of minutes." Then he asked me to accompany him to headquarters to register a complaint. I showed him my credentials and explained that I was working with Captain Samson on a murder case. He wanted to stay around to help, but I dismissed that. I was mad enough at Chuck and his pals to want to bust them wide open by myself.

  I leaned against the brick wall at the alley's mouth, swallowed the sickness in my throat, reached for my gun. Then I remembered the foot kicking it away from me. I couldn't find it, in or near the alley. They must have taken it, perhaps had intended to use it on me when the police car lights had fallen on them.

  Nothing but my gun had been taken; my car keys were still in my pocket. I walked back to the Cad, unlocked the trunk. The car is like a traveling office, and in the trunk I keep most of the portable equipment I've used at one time or another and wish to have handy. There were a couple of infra-red gadgets; an optophone, its receiver and tripod; and the snooperscope, a kind of small infra-red telescope; a watch camera and some other gadgets — but not what I wanted: a gun.

  I pawed through the stuff and found a hammer. It wouldn't be much good against a gun, but it would crush a man's skull and sink into his brain if he got close enough. I knew I couldn't go back into the clubhouse again; all those little monsters were potential killers — or killers already. But the hammer would be comforting in my hand while my brain cleared a little and the sickness died — and while I got my anger enough under control so that I wouldn't go and do something crazy.

  I heard the popping of a motor from near the clubhouse. Then another joined it and roared. I walked rapidly to the building on the corner, looked around the edge. The first motorcycle raced away, followed closely by the second. A car crammed with teen-agers pulled away from the curb. There was a regular exodus from the club. Soon only one car was left: Chuck Dorr's.

  Then the lights went out in the house. In the dimness four figures, bunched closely together, walked to the car. I recognized Chuck by his size: the blonde by her shape. The two others were smaller. All four got into the car and it pulled away from the curb, swung around in a U-turn and headed down the dimly lighted street away from me.

  I ran to my Cad, started it up and followed them. Chuck's car didn't have a taillight burning, but I could see a car three blocks ahead. I hoped that it was Chuck's, that they hadn't already turned into a side street; I had to make sure in a hurry and I had to take the chance that they didn't know my Cad. I caught them, passed them fast. It was the right car. Chuck was at the wheel, but he was alone in the front seat; the three others were in back. Remembering the bosomy brassy blonde, I had half an idea what they were doing back there.

  I got two blocks ahead of them and stayed there, watching in the rearview mirror. They'd be less likely to suspect a tail when I was ahead of them. They stayed behind for nearly two miles, and as I drove I tried to remember what I'd almost had back at the alley before I'd been slugged. I remembered Chuck's contorted face . . . and something crept into my thoughts so slowly then that I almost missed it. But I caught it — and shivered.

  I didn't just suspect him now, just feel sure; I knew!

  I was thinking of how Chuck's face had twitched and flooded with anger when I'd shown him Pam's photo. The morgue photo. I'd given him that one only to shock him, but when he looked at it his expression and words had told me he'd killed her. I had seen Pam's battered face in the morgue and in the morgue photo — and it wasn't Pam at all. Chuck hadn't looked at the photo until he'd got himself under control, but his first quick glance had told him it was Pam. He could have known only if he was the one who had made her face look like that, had carried the ugly picture in his twisted mind all day.

  Suddenly the car behind me turned left. I slammed on the brakes, wrestled the Cad around and roared back to the turnoff, wheeled in a few hundred yards behind them. I couldn't figure where they'd be going, because the road led into desolate countryside. We were already far from the lights of town, and the moon was hidden behind clouds again.

  I was worried about being spotted now, arousing their suspicions with lights following their car. I neared an isolated service station and I realized this might be my last chance to get in touch with Samson, get help out here. There were three guys against me, at least one of them with a gun — my gun. And I remembered the girl might have had a gun in her bag. Something flickered in my brain — but the station was on my right. If I stopped I might lose Chuck, but I had to chance it.

  I swung in and ran to the station phone, shoved in a coin and dialed Homicide. Samson answered.

  "Sam? Shell. Chuck Dorr's our man." I gave him a fast rundown on what I had, then said, "I tailed them out here — four of them. Chuck, his babe, and two young toughs. They're heading out into the sagebrush and I can't take them alone. Get some men —"

  "What babe?" Samson interrupted.

  "Some tough platinum-blonde tomato of Dorr's. They had some kind of beef, but I guess it's okay now. Who cares? They're out —"

  "Where are you?"

  He'd yelled it to me, startling me. I blurted out the location, telling him the direction they were heading.

  He said, his voice higher, taut, "My God, Shell! She's a policewoman!"

  Every bit of my skin tingled, got cold. I heard him drop the phone and shout. Maybe it shouldn't have surprised me, but it did; it stunned me. Sam was gone only a few seconds, but in that time I remembered words he had said to me: "Robbery has been casing them . . . I'll know what you're doing —" and a lot of other things that might have prepared me for this.

  Then he was back. "Listen fast, Shell. I told you I was holding out on you, and that was it. I couldn't spill, because even you might have given something away when you saw her, and I couldn't take a chance with her in the spot she was in. She knew you were coming down to the club, that's why I let you go. She carries a gun, is a better shot than you are, and could cover you. Shell, is there any chance Dorr knows she's a cop?"

  In the moment before I answered, I remembered the puzzled look in her hazel eyes when I'd jerked my head; she'd known who I was, maybe she'd thought I had some word from Samson. Now I understood how Sam had known Chuck wasn't alibied for last night; she'd told Sam, and even knowing Chuck might be Pam's killer, she'd taken the big chance and had come outside, worried, forgetting her bag. And then Dorr had come out with the bag that held her gun and must have held her shield or identification. Right after that I'd been beaten, probably was to have been killed — and they'd all left the club and brought her to this desolate spot.

  "Sam," I said, "he knows."

  He was cursing when I hung up. I sprinted to the car. The speedometer needle crept to ninety. After five or six miles I passed an intersection, a narrow road that extended both to my right and left. I swore, kept on going straight ahead. But no car showed up in my headlights, and finally I turned around and went back to the intersection. There wasn't time to wonder which branch they might have taken; I swung left onto the bumpy road and stopped, switched off the lights and got out of the car, opened the trunk. I found the infra-red scope and got behind the wheel again. If they saw me coming on this dark and little-traveled road I wouldn't have a chance — nor would she. I drove forward slowly, lights out, looking into the blackness ahead through the small scope.

  It's now called the snooperscope, though it was the sniperscope in World War II when it was used by snipers, and by Army drivers driving without lights on dark nights.
With the scope to my eyes I could see the outline of any otherwise invisible objects as much as two-hundred to three-hundred feet from me. As I drove I remembered Chuck's face when he'd hit me, Pam's face in the morgue — and Lucille's face. I remembered thinking Lucille might be pretty without the mass of paint and that brassy air.

  I was almost ready to give up, turn around and try the other direction, when I saw the clear outline of a car in the scope. It was parked off the road on my right, and I stopped a hundred feet away, and went forward on foot, carrying the hammer. It was Chuck's car, empty.

  The night was black, still, sky overcast and moon hidden behind the scudding clouds, but looking through the small tube I could see outlines of scattered trees and shrubs. I didn't see the four of them. They had parked on the road's right, so I walked to the right of the car.

  And then I saw them: four sharp outlines visible through the tube, fifty yards away. I couldn't make out what they were doing. I ran toward them, trying not to make noise that would startle the men. Then I stopped running and walked slowly, carefully, until I could hear Chuck's voice. I still couldn't see them without the scope, but through it I saw Chuck's long arm reach to the front of Lucille's blouse and rip it savagely. The two others were behind her, holding her. I moved closer, gripping the hammer in my fist.

  And now I could see them with my naked eyes. I heard Chuck's tense voice as he spoke viciously, savagely, filthily to Lucille, giving her an intimate description of what he and the other two with him now had done to Pam the night before. Then he told Lucille what they were going to do to her.

  I was almost near enough to jump them, and I had been so intent on Chuck's words that I hadn't noticed the clouds overhead slipping away from the moon. But moonlight grew without my noticing it, and bathed us all in soft but bright silver — and at the same moment I recognized the two kids holding Lucille as Ratface and his pal, Shorty. Ratface saw me.

  Before he shouted I saw the gun in Chuck's hand, saw him raise his arm and slam the gun against Lucille's head, saw her crumple as the kid yelled, "Look out! Chuck, it's —" Then I was sprinting toward them, raising the heavy hammer.