Have Gat—Will Travel

by Richard S. Prather

  Chuck whirled and flame spat from his gun; I saw the two others spin around and jump toward me. Chuck's gun was pointing toward me, ready to fire again, and I hurled the hammer at him, heard it thud against his body as I slammed my left foot into the ground, pivoted and leaped at the two others. I jarred into one of them before he could move out of the way, and my left fist went into his stomach almost to his backbone. As he fell away from me, my hand sliced his neck and he went down. The other one, the short kid, was two yards away, a gun in his hand. I left the ground and leaped feet first through the air toward him, twisting my body to the left. The gun fired, sending a slug past my head, and then I kicked at his leg with my right foot as I hit the ground, sliding. He fell hard onto his back, and I raised my leg and pounded my heel into his groin with all my strength.

  In the moonlight I could see Chuck Dorr bent over, fumbling on the ground. I got to my feet as he straightened up, hands empty. The hammer must have hit his arm and at least made him lose the gun. He bent over slightly, long powerful arms held out at his sides, and came toward me. I waited for him.

  But as he reached me he dropped suddenly and dived at my feet with his hands reaching for my ankles. I brought up my knee and felt it scrape his cheek, and then he grabbed my legs and twisted them out from under me. I landed heavily on my side. He was grunting, harsh, explosive noises ripping from his throat, and his fist jarred into my back, cracking against my spine as I rolled away from him. He landed on top of me, fists smashing at my head and the side of my face. I slammed a fist against his jaw and rolled onto my back, kicked at his face as he scuttled toward me on all fours and reached for my throat.

  My foot grazed his chin and thudded against his shoulder, twisting him, and I got my feet under me, started up as he caught his balance and lunged at me. His hands slapped against my throat, wrapped around it, thumbs digging deep into my throat's hollow as those same thumbs had pressed Pam's neck. His arms were high, his belly exposed, and as spots spun before my eyes and the blood congested in my face, distending the veins, I pulled my right arm back, the hand stretched open and my fingertips pointed stiffly at his solar plexus. His thumbs pressed deep into my flesh and blackness swelled before my eyes as I drove my open hand toward his belly.

  But my blow was high, and I hit solid rib. I felt bone snap beneath my fingers. A gasp of pain ripped from his mouth and his hands loosened on my throat. I balled both hands into fists, jerked them upward hard, slamming my wrists against his arms. His fingers tore from my throat, and with my arms above my head I spread my hands open, sliced their edges down hard on the muscles at each side of his neck.

  His arms dropped to his sides, and when he discovered he couldn't lift them, it was too late. I had plenty of time and I set myself, leaned forward as I swung, pivoting, getting the weight of my shoulder and body behind the blow, and smashed my fist against his mouth. As he staggered back I jumped forward and grabbed him, pulled him to me as I swung my fist against his mouth again. He'd had it all, then, but I sliced my palm's edge against the back of his jaw to make sure, then let him fall.

  The short kid I'd kicked in the groin was vomiting. I hunted till I found the hammer and my gun, then I walked to Shorty and hit him on the head with the hammer. He rolled over. Ratface was moaning softly, so I gave him a tap, too. Then I walked to Chuck, hoping he'd wiggle so I could clobber him. He lay quietly. What the hell! I thought, and I clobbered him anyway. Maybe I put a bit too much pleasure into the blow, but I was thinking about Pam, and the small satisfaction Mr. Franklin would get when I told him who had raped and killed his daughter. Chuck would come out of it eventually. He'd make the gas chamber. Lucille and I had heard enough to send him to the cyanide cell.

  Lucille!

  I turned around. She lay unconscious. Her blouse was in ribbons. I knelt by her and felt for her pulse. It was strong. There was a lump alongside her head, but her hair had kept the skin from being broken. This was the first time I'd seen her face relaxed, composed; and without her act, the hard, brash manner to confuse the impression, I had to alter my original opinion of the girl. With most of the paint off her face and the thick mascara thinned, she'd be choice. She was the first cop I'd ever thought of as sexy.

  In three or four minutes she moaned and came slowly out of it. Her eyes focused and she sat up fast, reaching for my face, long fingers curling into hooks.

  "Whoa! Hey!" I yelped. "It's me. It's me."

  She stopped reaching, sat up straight and blinked at me wonderingly. I remembered then that she had been sapped before I charged. "Oh," she said. "Mr. Scott. What . . ."

  She was still bewildered. I gave her a quick explanation, told her everything was all right.

  She looked around her. "Did you do all that?"

  For a minute I didn't answer her, because I'd got another shock. It was her voice. It didn't twang. It was honey and warm wine, a lovely lilting sound that caressed my ears, sent a pleasant shiver up my back. I should have known. All the rest had been an act; the voice was just another part of it.

  Finally I found my own voice. "I did it," I said. I almost added, "With my little hammer."

  She winced then. "Ooh. My head hurts."

  "Wait till these kids wake up." I had to chuckle. Seemed like everybody I knew had been hit on the head. Lucille and I talked for two or three minutes, and not once in all that time did it occur to me how silly this was: a shapely next-to-naked doll and me sitting here in the wilderness surrounded by virtual corpses.

  I found out that she was from Robbery and had been casing the Black Gang for three weeks. She'd got just about enough information about four robberies the kids had pulled under Chuck's leadership — including where some of the loot was stashed — to put Chuck, Ratface, and Shorty, plus half a dozen more of the gang, out of circulation. Then the Franklin case had come up — and it fingered the Black Gang. She'd been in a perfect spot, close to Chuck, and she'd volunteered to stay with the gang a while longer.

  She said, "I'm sorry I had to slap you, Mr. Scott —"

  "Shell."

  "— but the whole idea was that if Chuck got rattled he might spill something to me — if he was sure I was on his side. I had to make him think so, Mr. Scott, and —"

  "Shell."

  "— and I had to laugh. You did look funny, Mr. Scott."

  "Shell."

  She honestly didn't seem to realize how much was showing. Of course, she wasn't sitting where I was.

  "If I made an arrest I'd need both my tin and gun, and Chuck spotted them," she continued. "He ran out of cigarettes and went looking in my bag for some. That's when he found out. He had my gun in his pocket when he ran into us outside the club. But I had him fooled till then." She made a face. "I even had to let him kiss me, but he never —" She stopped. "My God!" she gasped. "Just now, before he hit me, he said he was going to . . . going to . . ." She couldn't seem to get it out, and at first I didn't know what she was driving at.

  "Going to . . . maybe he . . ."

  Then I got it. "No, no. I saw him sap you. Two seconds later I came charging in like Thor. He didn't . . . he didn't . . . uh, well, anyway he didn't."

  A big expression of relief flooded her face and she sighed heavily; oh man, she sighed heavily, and my mouth dropped open, and perhaps because of the turn the conversation had taken, perhaps because of the nearness of my mouth, she suddenly realized that Chuck had ripped her blouse wide open.

  Softly she said, "Ah!" Then she reached up and covered herself with her hands, blushing as she breathed, "Oh, my goodness!"

  I grinned. "Yes, indeed."

  I had taken a couple of big chances tonight, so I figured I might as well take a little one. It worked out all right.

  "Oh . . ." she said. "Oh, Shell."

  Nothing else happened for almost a minute. I was close enough to touch her and we were staring at each other, our faces a foot apart. It built up slowly. There weren't any electric sparks, and the earth didn't shake or split apart; it just started getting hot
ter than hell where we were. Her face softened, slackened as I put my arm around her shoulders, pulled her toward me. Her lower lip drooped, her warm breath brushed my lips, and I felt as if I were going to melt and seep into the ground.

  And then her face was closer, her lips parted, and her mouth touched mine and pressed and clung, and she wasn't covering herself any more, she didn't have to, and she was so warm and wonderful in my arms that we were both practically radioactive, and this went on until I figured I'd have to make the rounds with my hammer again pretty quick.

  Just when things were getting interesting I heard sirens, and headlights slithered through the trees.

  I sat up and looked around and my breathing was almost wiggling the shrubbery, and I said, "Well, they sure as hell picked a fine time for it."

  In a matter of seconds, Sam and a couple of the boys from his squad were with us. They made short work of hauling Chuck and his pals into the police cars.

  Sam took off his jacket and handed it to Lucille. She looked good to me even in the loose-fitting coat. Then Sam held out his hand to me while Lucille stood by, smiling. "We both owe you a lot, Shell. So does Mr. Franklin. Those kids are finished for sure now."

  I couldn't say much; my pulse was still racing and I couldn't keep my eyes away from Lucille as she squeezed into the crowded front seat of Sam's car. Then she spoke. "It's been a pleasure, Shell."

  "Yeah," I managed to reply. "I'd sure like to see more of you, some time. Tomorrow night, maybe?"

  I was close enough to her now to notice that she blushed at what I'd said and she tugged Sam's coat more tightly around herself. I hastily added, "I mean let's get together for dinner. We can forget all about the young and the damned."

  What she answered was drowned out by Sam's laughter as he shot the police car into high gear. Back to my Cad I went. God, she was lovely. I did want to see her again.

  CODE 197

  I wheeled the Cad off the street and stopped by the sign "Gordon's Tropical Fish." This was Sunday, and the whole clientele of "Sheldon Scott, Investigations" — that's me — was taking a needed day of rest. I cut the engine and turned in the seat to look, for the umpteenth time, at Donna.

  Donna was Donna O'Reilly of the shimmering black hair and soft, tender mouth, and eyes green as the sod of her native Ireland. Donna was five-three of sweetly curving temptation, a breath of brogue, and full of cute little tricks like laughing warmly into your ear while biting on it.

  That last sensational sensation I had experienced only a couple of times, since I'd met Donna less than eighteen hours ago when I'd made the date for today, but I had stratospheric hopes because we were miles out of Los Angeles and headed for a picnic in the yonder hills. Until now our potentially mad affair had been merely words and two nibbles, but I'm an optimist — and so far Donna liked everything I liked: dancing, bourbon-and-water, rare prime ribs. Even tropical fish, which I keep and breed.

  Driving out she'd spotted the sign here and bubbled, "Oh, let's go in there. I know Mr. Gordon — he's spawning Amphiprion Percula today." Well, naturally I wheeled right in.

  Donna swung her shapely legs out of the car. "Come on, Shell." She faced me, running white hands over her high breasts, in at her slim waist, and over rounded hips, smoothing her blue-jersey dress. It wasn't wrinkled. I caught up with Donna as she entered the fish hatchery.

  The owner was a mild-looking middle-aged man with hair graying at the temples. When he saw Donna he beamed and grabbed her hands. After introductions, she said, "Mr. Scott wants to see the Amphiprion Percula." There was that word again. Mr. Gordon led us to a twenty-gallon tank, then went into another room.

  "Hell," I said, "they're clownfish."

  "Oh," Donna said, "I wanted to surprise you. You've seen them before!"

  "Uh-huh — but you surprised me. I thought you were talking about whales or something. This is a treat, though. I've never seen so many of them at once. They're beautiful."

  They were. Three pure white bands separating vivid yellow, black-tipped fins, and there were about thirty of them in the tank. A small fortune; they're hard to get. I heard a squeaking sound. Donna had brought in the thermos and uncorked it, was pouring coffee into the two metal cups from its top. She handed me the bigger cup and said, "Got to keep your stamina up."

  "Baby," I said, "you'd better worry about keeping it down."

  She grinned and directed me to points of interest in the room. There were about forty tanks lining the walls and I looked at Neons, Raspboras, Panchax, Badisbadis and more. Once I sipped at the coffee, but it was so hot it burned my lips. I walked back to Donna and noticed her cup was empty.

  "All gone?" I asked, pointing. "Cast-iron esophagus?"

  "I'm used to Mexican food." She grinned. "I like hot stuff."

  "So do I like hot stuff."

  "Then drink your coffee and let's go picnic."

  I didn't know for sure what she meant by that, but I liked it. The cup was at my lips when I looked past Donna to the clownfish tank. Something was screwy. "Hey," I said to her, "something's wrong with the clowns. They're going crazy."

  She laughed. "You mean they're flipping?"

  I groaned as I walked to the tank. "Funny. You should be sent to the firing squad." But then I stopped cracking wise. Two clownfish floated belly-up at the water's surface.

  "They're dying!" I told Donna. "Get Mr. Gordon."

  She trotted off somewhere, but I was watching the tank. Anybody would hate to see such gorgeously colored fish gasping for air and dying, but probably only a fish fancier would feel the way I did. There must have been a dozen dead now.

  Donna stopped beside me. "He'll be here in a minute and fix them up. Drink your coffee, Shell, and let's go."

  That was the first thing she'd said that had hit me wrong. "Well, hell, honey," I said, "I'm going to wait . . ." I let it trail off, wondering why she was so anxious for me to drink the damned coffee. I looked at the full cup, then back at Donna.

  She moistened her lips. "I'll be in the car, Shell."

  I hardly noticed her going. When I looked at the tank again all the fish were dead. The water seemed murky. I raised my hand, rubbed it over my lips where they'd touched the coffee, then sat the cup down slowly, staring at it, a thin vein of revulsion and disbelief running through my brain. I walked out front. Donna wasn't in sight. The car was empty. I whirled around, ran back into the building, into the other room. It was empty, a door open in the far wall. Nobody was in or near the building, and when I sprinted back to my Cad and ground the engine, it didn't start. I found wires loose under the hood.

  Sweating, with my hands moist and cold, I sat behind the wheel, thinking about Donna O'Reilly, who liked everything I like — because she must have planned it that way; Donna, who couldn't have drunk that steaming coffee so fast, who hadn't intended to drink any coffee from that thermos. But the one thought, oddly enough, hardest for me to accept was that anybody — not just a sweet-faced, lovely little Irish colleen, but anybody, could so casually have killed those thirty clowns.

  Captain amos wade was a lean, almost cadaverous cop assigned to Bunco, but also the Department's antisubversive expert and liaison between City Hall and the FBI. He leaned back in his chair and said, "Drink your java, Shell. It won't kill you."

  "Not this time, maybe." I was waiting until the chemist at Scientific Investigations reported on what was in that first cup of coffee, which I'd brought in. I'd told my story to the police, and looked at mugg shots in the "I" Room without seeing pictures of Donna or Mr. Gordon. I was here to kill time, but also because I enjoyed talking to Amos, to whom I'd been talking quite a bit lately. One of my closest friends, an ex-newspaperman and writer named Jim Brandon, was writing a book for which he'd got some factual material from Amos, and the three of us had often sat here jawing. Jim Brandon was tall and slim, brainy as hell, and looked a little like William Holden, which isn't bad. I not only liked Jim, but admired him because he was a good American who was working at it. In other words, h
e was actively anti-Communist. His book was anti-Communist, a nonfiction job.

  Amos Wade said, "This Donna was a luscious little gal, huh?"

  "On the outside. I met her at Pete's bar last night. She probably knew I usually drop in there when I leave the office. Hell, I thought I'd picked her up."

  "No idea why the funny business?"

  "How, but not why. She poured both cups of coffee from the thermos, then dumped hers into the fish tank. Wish that report would come in from SID. Like to know how I'd have died."

  He grinned. "In agony, no doubt, in payment for your sins."

  "No doubt, but I don't get it. This last year, I've handled twenty cases. Probably ten guys would like to knock me off."

  "You just did another job for Jim, didn't you?"

  "Yeah, flew to Boston. Got back night before last."

  "How's his new book coming along?"

  "Good. He's got to change something in it, he told me, but it's about wrapped up. He's coming over to my place this afternoon. Taking a whole half-day off, so he must be about finished." Jim had worked for three years, nights and weekends, on the thing and getting him away from the typewriter on Sunday was a rare occasion for celebration.

  Wade's phone rang. I'd left word that I'd be here, and he listened for a minute and then handed me the phone. Jackson, the police chemist, told me they hadn't yet identified whatever was in the coffee, but added, "Wouldn't have killed you, Shell. Some kind of drug. Might take days to pin it down. We squirted a bit in some mice and a guinea pig. Killed the mice, put the pig to sleep. Haven't found any evidence of organic damage."

  I thanked Jackson and hung up. This got stranger and stranger.

  My apartment is in Hollywood's Spartan Apartment Hotel, and I'd just finished cleaning and oiling my .38 Colt Special, since it seemed possible that I'd be using it, when the buzzer sounded. It was nearly four p.m., when I expected Jim Brandon, but I loaded the revolver and snapped the cylinder shut before going to the door, gun dangling in my left hand.