Say It With Bullets

by Richard Powell

  It was like kicking her in the teeth. She swallowed a couple of times, and then said brightly, “I asked for that, didn’t I? I’m a big girl now and ought to stop tagging around after you.” She got up and left.

  Two

  A highway sign flicked some words at him: Cheyenne 176 miles. The miles were peeling off the signs fast. It gave him the same tight hot feeling in his stomach that you got trying to keep a crippled plane in the air and watching your last thousand feet melt off the altimeter. Except that in this case he wasn’t coming closer and closer to a crash. He was coming closer and closer to Russ Nordhoff in Cheyenne.

  He hoped Russ would talk. He hoped the guy would open up and give him the whole story and be able to prove that somebody else had done the shooting. Otherwise he had better put a slug in Russ. He thought about that and felt sweat begin crawling over his body. He had never killed anyone. It was one thing to practice quick draws in front of a mirror but it might be very different to look at big dumb Russ along the barrel of a loaded .45 and squeeze the trigger. He wished he knew whether he could do it.

  Thinking about Russ was getting him wound up too tight and he stared out of the bus window and tried to make his mind go blank. The flat Nebraska land was shimmering in the heat. Houses and barns lost their outlines and changed shape. The blades of a gaunt windmill blurred and began looking like the prop of an airplane. Of an old beat-up C-47 that he had flown in China before the Reds came. It was a good plane, though. He had flown it a lot of missions over the Himalayas—the Hump—during the war. Then after the war he and five other guys from his outfit bought it as surplus and had started a little airline in China. They were going to make a million bucks…

  This was certainly a swell way to blank out his mind.

  He squeezed his eyes shut to see if that would work. A lot of bright dots whirled in his head and then slowed and began painting a picture for him, like dots on a radarscope.

  No, that wouldn’t work either. His memory was once more digging up that business at Nanking Airfield in 1949. For a moment he almost decided to open his eyes and get rid of the picture, but then he figured he would take another look at it. There was quite a fascination about seeing it each time because it was like a movie, and he kept hoping that some day the camera would make a mistake and show him what had happened behind his back.

  He kept his eyes shut and let the picture sharpen. There they were, all five of them: Frankie and Domenic and Russ and Cappy and Ken. His five partners. They had just crossed him up, but good. It was late April of 1949; the Red armies were closing in on Nanking and the Nationalists were clearing out. He and his five pals were clearing out, too. He had told the others to round up a bunch of refugees to take along. Then he had gone into the city to finish some business and when he got back he found his partners had rounded up one refugee. Quite a refugee, too. Nanking’s top black market operator. The plane was also loaded with a lot of boxes marked with Chinese characters saying they were medical supplies, and the Chinese black market guy was hovering over them as if he expected an epidemic.

  He had kicked the guy off the plane and gone into their operations shack to have it out with his partners. He hadn’t gotten to first base.

  Ken had said, “So what if this Chink is in the black market? He’ll pay ten times what a whole load of refugees will pay, if we fly him to Hong Kong.”

  “The way I figured,” Russ said, “we got to look after ourselves.”

  “We were gonna make a million, remember?” Domenic said. “We were gonna do it on the level. But every time we made some real dough, this lousy Chinese money dropped in value and we ended with nickels. This is our last chance to cash in.”

  “We been out here almost four years since the war,” Frankie said. “I don’t want to go home broke.”

  “This junk you give us about saving lives,” Cappy said. “What if we do leave a lot of refugees? We’re flying out all them boxes of medical supplies, ain’t we? Ain’t that gonna save lives?”

  He could have taken everything except that stuff about medical supplies. He said angrily, “I’m going out and break open those boxes. And you know what? If they’re medical supplies, you can kick my teeth in and use some on me.”

  His memory showed him the way they had stared back at him. Frankie leaned against the wall, watching him sideways out of faded blue eyes. Domenic sat on the edge of a desk, swinging one leg. His heavy-lidded black eyes seemed faintly amused. Big dumb Russ was frowning. Russ had gray eyes that blinked as if they found it hard to understand some of the things they saw. Cappy was mad. His brown eyes had the look of a guy picking a target for a right-hand swing. Ken’s eyes were hot, black, excited.

  Right after his memory took that picture, he turned and marched out of the operations shack heading for the C-47. He had marched five steps when a slug from a .45 caught up with him and slammed him face down in the dust.

  He studied the five pairs of eyes, trying for the hundredth time to figure which pair had looked down the barrel of the .45 at his retreating back. He couldn’t get the answer. The picture never gave him a hint of what had happened behind his back. As he studied it the picture faded until there was nothing but five pairs of eyes, watching him, watching…

  He opened his eyes and yanked his thoughts back to the present. He had brought something with him out of the past, though. He brought a feeling that somebody was watching him now, years later, on the bus zooming across Nebraska.

  He sat very quietly without turning his head or moving his eyes and tried to figure out who it was. Nobody in the front part of the bus was watching him. The seat across from him was empty, and that left only the seat back of him across the rear of the bus. Usually no one sat there. He counted the people he could see: the driver, Holly Clark, thirty passengers. There ought to be thirty-one passengers in sight. One of them was behind him, watching. It made the back of his neck twitch.

  He jerked his head around suddenly and caught the guy at it. The watcher was sitting a little off to one side. He was a man in his fifties, with a round face and pink bald head and eyes that you might describe as kindly if you hadn’t caught them spying.

  “Hello there,” the man said. “Finished your nap?”

  “Yeah,” Bill said.

  “I moved back here to get away from all the chatter up front. My wife and two other women are busy trying to dig up mutual acquaintances. They couldn’t track them down more grimly if they were detectives hunting a murderer. By the way, I’ve never met you properly. I’m Brown. Dr. Brown. General practice, in Columbus, Ohio. You’re Wayne, I think.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mind if I move up beside you and chat awhile?” “Yeah,” Bill said.

  “You mean you do mind?” “That’s right.”

  The doctor gave an embarrassed laugh. “I’d better make a confession,” he said. “I didn’t come back here to get away from the chatter. I came back to take a look at you.”

  “I could feel you watching me.”

  “A lot of people claim they can feel people watching them, but I don’t really think it’s true. Your subconscious mind probably took in the fact that somebody walked past you and sat down here. When you awoke, that fact moved into your conscious mind and was translated into a feeling that you were being watched.”

  “Very interesting. Where does that leave us, Doc?”

  “Well. I ought to explain. That nice girl, Miss Clark, was talking to me a short time ago. It seems she used to know you way back when. She said you’d come on this trip to get over a nervous breakdown, and she was worried about you and didn’t think you were getting over it and wondered if I could help.”

  Bill said disgustedly, “You know how you can help? You can go to work on her. She’s got a bad case of minding other people’s business. I don’t know if it’s curable.”

  Brown chuckled and said, “You may be right. Nice girl, though. Matter of fact I wouldn’t have taken any action on what she told me except that my wife and I had the r
oom next to yours last night. You may remember the walls in that hotel were thin, and I woke up a few times and heard you pacing around. And this morning I could see you hadn’t slept much.”

  “Lots of people don’t sleep well sometimes.”

  “This is very unprofessional of me, Wayne. But if there’s anything I can do, just on a friendly basis—”

  “You want my case history, Doc?”

  “If you’d like to tell me.”

  Bill smiled. He wondered what the guy would say if he gave him the straight dope. It might go like this:

  I don’t sleep well at night, Doc, because I just got back from hiding out in Red China for four years. Back in ‘49 some pals of mine pumped a slug into my back and left me for dead. Some Chinese nursed me back to what we will laughingly call health, and then I started keeping one jump ahead of the Reds.

  I got home to Philly a couple months ago and began sleeping better. But by lousy luck one of the newspapers printed a story about me escaping from Red China and I guess those pals of mine got to read it somehow and found I wasn’t dead. A week after the story ran, somebody took another shot at me at night in front of my family’s house. So now I don’t sleep well anymore.

  But I have a cure all worked out, Doc. I’m on my way to visit my old pals. I hadn’t figured on bothering them but if they won’t let me alone I have to do something. I wouldn’t say my life is worth much, but you know how it is, a guy often puts a sentimental value on staying alive. So those are the symptoms, Doc…

  He said aloud, “You’re on vacation, Doc. Stay on it, will you? There’s nothing wrong with me but too many martinis and late hours and a little too much pressure at work. Thanks anyway.”

  The other man got up. “Don’t mention it, Wayne. But I’ll be glad to help any time.” He returned to his place near the front of the bus.

  Bill closed his eyes and tried to relax, and then felt the seat jarred as a man sat down beside him. He turned and scowled at the guy. Maybe he ought to put up a turnstile and charge admission. The newcomer was a middle-aged character with a square red face and shoulders that crowded him against the side of the bus. He wore a rust-colored sports jacket and yellow sports shirt. Bill had noticed him a couple of times before, pointing out firmly to Holly Clark how arrangements for the trip could be improved.

  “Heard you talking to that doctor,” the man said. “I’m just two seats ahead so I couldn’t help hearing. You did just right, telling him to mind his business.”

  Bill said, “I get a lot of practice telling people that.”

  “My name’s Blakeslee. George M. Blakeslee. I’m in lumber. No sir, once a man gets in the hands of a pill roller, it’s just too bad. Now take me. Never sick a day in my life. You know why? I stay away from doctors.”

  “When they let me,” Bill said, “I stay away from people.”

  “You don’t want to do that. Bad for a man. You ought to mix with people. Trip like this is the best

  thing in the world for a man. Get out. Meet new people. See new places. Travel gets a man’s mind off his troubles.”

  “This trip’s starting to give me new ones,” Bill said, wondering if that would register. It didn’t, though.

  “I admit it isn’t arranged perfectly. Not the way I’d handle things if I were running it. But it isn’t bad, though. I’ve been on worse. Last summer the wife and I took a trip through New England and.

  You couldn’t handle this guy gently. “Look, Blakeslee,” he said bluntly, “I’d like to rest. Do you mind letting me do it?”

  “Sure, sure,” Blakeslee said. “Know just how you feel. Just thought I’d take a moment to cheer you up. Mark my words, in a few more days you’ll be back in the pink and sleeping like a baby.” He got up, slapped Bill on the shoulder and left.

  This was going to be quite a trip if everybody on the bus had a pet recipe for cheering him up. Probably they all meant well, but he wasn’t likely to start sleeping like a baby in the near future. Not while he had an ugly little hunch that one of his pals knew he was on this bus, heading west.

  Three

  He closed the door of his tourist-court room and pulled the curtains across the windows so nobody could look in. The inside of his mouth tasted like an old inner tube and he could feel his heartbeat down to his toes. He was in Cheyenne, where Russ lived. Big dumb Russ, who might or might not talk. Who might or might not find out whether a guy named Bill Wayne could kill a man if he had to. Big dumb Russ.

  Maybe he was overworking that word dumb. Let’s pretend Russ was the one who shot him that time in China. Then suppose that, a few weeks ago, somebody in Philadelphia sent Russ a newspaper clipping attached to a note saying, “Didn’t you know this guy?” Russ wasn’t so dumb he couldn’t read. The newspaper clipping would tell him Bill Wayne was alive and back home.

  Maybe a brilliant guy would decide in five seconds that Bill Wayne might come around asking awkward questions and looking for trouble. Maybe it would take a brilliant guy all of a few hours to get started for Philadelphia, to head off the trouble before it began. It might take big dumb Russ a couple of days to get to the same point. But he would end up just as dangerous as the brilliant guy.

  He unstrapped his suitcase and hauled out the automatic. It was a hunk of metal finished in rattlesnake gray. The thing sat up in his hand alertly, as if it were alive and had a mind of its own. He yanked back the slide and eased it forward and heard the solid snick of a cartridge seating itself in the firing chamber. Then he pulled the window curtain aside a few inches and peered out.

  Across the way Holly Clark was talking to a couple of members of the Treasure Trip party. He heard her voice clearly. She was saying, “Yes, we’re really going to see a rodeo this afternoon. Of course it’s too early for the Cheyenne Frontier Days, which is the big rodeo, but one of the ranches near town will put on a riding and roping and shooting exhibition for us. We ought to start by two-thirty.”

  He let the curtain fall back into place, looked at his watch. It was two o’clock. He wasn’t going to the rodeo; he had told Holly he had a headache and wanted to rest. What he actually planned to do was wait until the Treasure Trip party got a good head start, and then scout around town to find out where Russ lived and worked. Meanwhile it might be nice to have the .45 handy. He wasn’t forgetting the nights he had lain awake recently, wondering if one of the gang knew he was on the bus heading west.

  Hunches were queer things. Especially hunches that somebody was stalking you. Like the doc said that morning on the bus, it might be the result of your subconscious mind adding up tiny facts into a big one.

  A guy shot at him and nicked his left side one night last month in Philadelphia. The gunman had to be one of his five former pals. The morning after the shooting he decided to get busy and settle things, and went to New York to shop for a packaged tour that visited the right places. He spent a couple of weeks in New York making his choice. Then he went to Chicago and waited for the tour to start. And all during that time, a hunch that he was being followed had grown stronger and stronger.

  It wasn’t anything he could nail down. It might be a combination of tiny things: footsteps keeping pace with him too often, a vaguely familiar figure melting into a crowd, travel folders in his hotel room lying in a slightly different pattern than the way he had left them. The weird part of it was that he couldn’t imagine Russ or Ken or Frankie or Cappy or Domenic getting away with anything like that. He ought to be able to spot one of them a mile away.

  He wasn’t going to take any chances, though. He had played target long enough and it was his turn to have the first shot. He stretched out on his bed and slipped the automatic under his pillow. It wouldn’t do any harm to relax before his trip into town.

  He didn’t plan to go to sleep. And when he awoke he was ready to swear he hadn’t been sleeping. But a certain fact said he had been. The door was open. He couldn’t see the doorway without turning because it was on a line with the head of the bed. But he could see an extra splash
of light on the rear wall and feel a faint stirring of air. He remembered he had failed to lock the door. It hadn’t blown open, though. It had a good latch. A hand had opened it softly and someone was standing in the doorway.

  He moved slowly, like a man stirring in sleep, and let his right hand slide under the pillow and curl around the grip of the big automatic. He took a deep breath, held it, leaped up. A girl was in the doorway. Not Russ or Cappy or Ken or Frankie or Domenic. A girl. He had to work it out slowly because his brain was churning along in a rut and didn’t want to leave it. A girl. Holly Clark.

  She stared at the gun in his hand, shrank back. “Bill!” she gasped. “What’s the matter?”

  He leaned down and shoved the .45 under the pillow. His hand was shaking a little. “You don’t want to walk in on me like that,” he said. “What’s the idea?”

  “But I knocked,” she said weakly. “I knocked and called your name. You didn’t answer.”

  “Do you always walk into a guy’s room when he doesn’t answer? It must get you some interesting experiences.”

  “I’m awfully sorry. I was telling Dr. Brown about your headache and of course he knows you haven’t been sleeping and I coaxed him to write out a prescription that might help. I came here to give it to you. When you didn’t answer, I scribbled a note and planned to leave it and the prescription in here.”

  “I thought you were a big girl now and were going to stop tagging after me.”

  “I don’t consider this tagging after you. It’s my job to run the tour, and keep everybody happy and healthy.”

  “Yeah? Well, I enjoy being miserable.”

  “Bill, about that gun you grabbed—”

  “I always sleep with a gun under my pillow. Habit I picked up in the war.”

  “I don’t believe it. And I’m beginning to wonder about that nervous breakdown you claim you had.”

  “Is there any way I can coax you to mind your own business?”