Say It With Bullets

by Richard Powell

  Holly didn’t like so much speed, and said so. She pointed out that, while the Nevada law didn’t set an exact upper limit, it used the term “reasonable and proper.” She had odd ideas about danger. Apparently she thought the speed of a bullet was reasonable and proper but eighty miles an hour in a car wasn’t. He didn’t slow down. It was too hard to shake off that gray sedan. Miles went by before the mirror no longer showed it coming around a distant curve.

  They zoomed down a grade and leveled off beside a blue lake and flicked past a California boundary sign, and then he had to clamp on the brakes for a plant inspection station. Two other cars were ahead of him and the wait would give the gray sedan time to catch up. He waited, sweating a little, while the other cars were inspected. The gray sedan didn’t arrive. He hadn’t wanted it to catch up, but he wasn’t happy about the fact that it refused to catch up when it had a chance. He peered back, trying to see if it was parked far back on the road, waiting. The road looked empty.

  The plant inspector reached them finally and asked if they had any plants or vegetables or fruit. He looked into the luggage compartment.

  Bill asked, “What do you do if you find stuff like that?”

  “We confiscate it,” the inspector said. “It might be carrying insects or diseases that could damage California crops.”

  “You’re going to have fun with a car behind us.”

  “What exactly do you mean?”

  “Oh, we got to talking to some people at a gas station up the road a way and—”

  Holly asked, “What are you talking about?”

  “Let’s not cover up for them, honey,” Bill said. “You know they’d been collecting desert plants all through Nevada. After all, it is against the law to bring that stuff into California.” He turned back to the inspector and said, “It’s a gray sedan. They’ll be along any time. They may have their plants hidden.”

  “Thanks a lot,” the man said. “We’re good at finding stuff.”

  Bill waved and pulled out from the inspection station and sent the car whisking down the road. Just as he took the first turn he thought the rear-view mirror showed a glitter of chromium and a gray hood slipping into sight far back.

  “Remember me?” Holly said. “I’m in this with you. If you don’t tell me what’s happening I’m likely to break our necks tripping over one of your little schemes. A gray sedan is trailing us, is it?”

  “It probably doesn’t mean anything.”

  “You went to a lot of trouble to delay him at the inspection station. That sounds as if you’re taking him seriously.”

  “Well, he’s probably just an ordinary tourist. But he got on my nerves by sticking too close after we left Carson City.”

  “He didn’t catch you, though. You don’t think it’s the police?”

  “When I first noticed him I wasn’t going fast and he could have caught me easily. So he’s not a cop chasing us. In fact I don’t think it’s anybody important to me at all.”

  “You mean important to us.”

  “Let’s get this straight,” Bill said. “You’re not in this with me. You’re an innocent bystander. You don’t know a thing about any of these murders.”

  “That will be news to the police.”

  “You can make it stick. Last night you bumped into me at that gambling club. You had no idea I was dodging a murder rap. I started to win a lot of money gambling. Then I told you that a couple of guys I’d known in China were in town, looking for me with guns on account of something that happened over there. I gave you a hunk of money and told you to buy a big fast car and bring it around to the club so I could get away safely. I told you not to breathe a word of it to anybody. I said if you were a good kid and did what I asked we’d get married before we left. You’d been falling for me, see?”

  “This is beginning to sound like a fate worse than jail.”

  “You didn’t really want to buy a car and run off with me. You went back to the tourist court hoping I’d show up before the bus left. But when I didn’t you couldn’t ride away with all that money You got off the bus and then decided to get me the car. You brought it around and I talked you into getting married.”

  “It was quite a ceremony. Just the two of us. No minister.”

  “There was a justice of the peace,” he said sharply. “A fake one. You didn’t know that. You didn’t realize until afterward that I must have hired some hanger-on at the club to pretend to be one. We picked him up at a place he claimed was his home and drove around while he pretended to marry us. I explained I was too worried about my ex-pals from China to wait around in a house. He signed a hunk of paper and gave it to us and we dropped him off. Later when you came out of the rosy glow and asked to see the marriage license, you suspected it was a phony, and then I laughed and tore it up.”

  “Do you really think I could get away with that story?”

  “Sure. Just tell it with a lot of tears. How can they prove anything? And don’t forget that I’ll back you up if necessary.”

  “If necessary and if alive. That story makes me look like an awful idiot.”

  “Would you rather look like an idiot and walk out free, or look like a smart girl in jail?”

  “You’re not giving me a very wide choice.”

  “There isn’t any choice, if the cops ever grab you. But there’s a good chance you may never be dragged into it. Now have you got the story?”

  “I’ve got it,” she said, “but I’m not sure I’m going to keep it.”

  “Holly, if you—”

  “Let me think about it for a while, will you? Don’t rush me.”

  About an hour after leaving the plant inspection station they reached the turn-off to Yosemite and swung west and saw the Sierras banking up ahead of them like cumulus clouds.

  He whistled and said, “Maybe I should have brought my airplane.”

  “It’s hard to believe a road actually goes through those mountains, isn’t it? Bill, I’ve finished thinking about your scheme for keeping me out of trouble.”

  “You didn’t find any holes it, did you?”

  “Well, for one thing, that story wouldn’t sound very convincing unless I left you when we reached Yosemite.”

  “Of course it wouldn’t. I can’t rejoin the party and you can’t stay with me.”

  “What are you planning to do?”

  “Buzz down to Frisco and L.A., hunting for Cappy and Domenic.”

  She took a deep breath and said, “I don’t think you’re going to like this. I want to go with you. Now don’t scream too quickly. I can help, honest I can. You need somebody to keep looking behind while you’re looking ahead. You need somebody to play scout and ask innocent questions and warn you if somebody’s following or spying on you. I can do all that. And you’ve got to have help. You’ll never get out of this mess if you don’t. You—”

  He had been holding back the explosion as long as possible but now it ripped loose. He told her how many kinds of an idiot she was. He explained the riskiness of her plan in words of one syllable that she might be able to understand. He said she would be about as helpful as a broken leg. She sat curled up on the seat and watched him with hurt eyes.

  When he ran out of breath, she said plaintively, “I thought about your plan and now you ought to think about mine.”

  “Yours isn’t a plan. It’s a suicide pact.”

  “But will you think about it? For a few minutes? Without arguing or—”

  The future caught up with him that second. It caught up in a roar of horsepower and yowl of tires. One moment the road behind was empty and the next moment a car whipped around a hairpin turn back of him and came zooming up like a fighter plane making a pass. The road had just made a switchback that put him on the outside. His brain flashed a warning: crazy driver, pull over, give him room. He swung the big car close to the low guard wall, close to the drop into blue space.

  Then he got the word. It came awfully late. He was the crazy driver, not the other guy. Roaring up on h
is left on the inside of the road came the gray sedan with one guy crouched behind the wheel and another glaring out at him. Hello, Cappy. Hello, Domenic. This is it, huh? The gray sedan slammed in at him and he braced for the crash.

  Fourteen

  Fenders hit like ash cans falling downstairs. Next to him Holly screamed. He jammed the accelerator down to kick the car from high into third. A surge of power came roaring from the big engine and his body jerked back with the pickup. The convertible leaped forward, crowding into the gray sedan and forcing it to straighten. They rocketed forward together.

  The narrowness of the road had blocked the sedan from cutting into them from a sharp angle. But for that, they would already be over the low guard wall and spinning into space. Up ahead was the payoff. Up ahead the road hooked left and the wall swept across his course and over the wall loomed miles of sky. If he didn’t get to that turn first he’d need wings. He gripped the wheel and stood on the accelerator. He gained an inch. Two inches. A foot. He was almost even with the sedan. His car had more weight and power. But it was jammed against the sedan and helping carry it along. The turn was racing toward him. He had to gamble. He gave the wheel a twitch to the right and broke clear for a second and felt the car lunge ahead and then spun the wheel hard left and slashed across the road.

  That was it. He had a three-foot lead and a quarter-I ton in weight and fifty extra horses under the hood. The sedan swerved, vanished in a clang of metal on rock as if a giant hand had brushed it off him. He didn’t have time to look back. That hairpin turn was on his neck and he was jolting the car with quick jabs at the brake and hearing the tires skid and catch and skid and watching blue sky wheel madly past the hood and then feeling the last skidding lurch and seeing the wonderful empty road straightening ahead.

  He took a deep slow breath. “You know what?” he said. “A guy can get his fenders dented that way.”

  Holly looked at him with solemn eyes. “I thought people only got into dogfights in planes, not cars.”

  “That’s the disappointed fighter pilot in me. What happened to him? Did you see?”

  “You ran him into the side of the cliff and his rear skidded around and he almost turned over and finally stopped broadside across the road.” “Did he start up again?”

  “I don’t know, Bill. About that time you began doing barrel rolls and loops and a few other things they taught you in the Air Force. Was it my imagination, or at one time were we actually out in the wild blue yonder?”

  “Some driving, huh? I didn’t know I could do it either. You don’t look as scared as you ought to be.”

  “If you would like me to break down and have hysterics it will be no trouble at all.”

  “You’re doing all right. Better than I am. That chattering you hear is not from the valves but from my knees knocking.”

  “It was deliberate, wasn’t it, Bill? They were trying to knock us down that awful drop?”

  “Just a couple of old pals playing tag. Pals by the name of Cappy Judd and Domenic Ferrante. Hang on for a minute, will you? I want a little more mountain between our car and theirs.”

  He concentrated on driving for a few minutes, taking turns at a speed just short of a skid and roaring up the straighter grades. Finally he braked to a stop on a level stretch and yanked back the emergency. The motor was still running and the car sat in the middle of the road so that nobody could pass. He jumped out.

  He made a quick check of the left side of the car. It would make some repair shop very happy. Nothing serious, though. He looked back down the road, listened. Not a sound. He walked to the guard wall and leaned over it and peered down the steep tumble of rock. The road zigzagged below him like a fire escape and far down he saw a gray car with a couple of tiny figures pushing and hauling at a front wheel. He couldn’t resist a temptation. He picked up a chunk of rock and threw it. The rock went curving down and for a pleasant moment he pictured it bashing in one of their heads. The line was right but the slant of the mountain wasn’t. The rock dropped short, went bounding down with a little stampede of other rocks following it.

  One of the tiny figures looked up, crouched. Bill grabbed another rock. His arm started the throw and then not far above his head the air made a snapping noise and up the mountain came the rattling echo of a shot. He made a wild pitch and jumped back into the car and got going.

  “That must have been fun,” Holly said. “If you met a rattlesnake would you insist on biting it out with him?”

  “Taking a shot at me was a mistake on his part. When he thinks about it he’ll be glad he didn’t hit me.”

  “Aren’t you being too charitable?”

  “Look at it this way. I’m no good to Cappy and Domenic with a bullet hole through me. That is, not unless they can hide the body where it won’t be found. They want to fix things so I take the blame for three murders. So I either have to vanish or get knocked off in what looks like an accident.”

  “You certainly have logic on your side. I wish you had a little self-restraint, too.”

  “Yeah, well, I admit I lost my head there too. I can’t afford to knock them off. They’re my only chance of clearing myself. I’ve got to get one of them alone and beat the story out of him and then call in the cops and pray that they’ll dig up enough evidence to clear me.”

  “I don’t know why either of them would tell you anything.”

  “Don’t you?” he said. “Well, when a guy gets a choice of having his head kicked in or of talking, you’d be surprised how chatty he can be. Especially after the first few licks. I know Cappy and Domenic. They’re like a lot of other guys, awful tough until they’re licked. If I had a gun I’d go after them now and take my chances, and you could scram in the car.”

  “You’re thinking of some other girl,” Holly said. “I’m the one who’s staying with you, remember?”

  He said irritably, “Wake up, Snow White. You’re talking in your sleep.”

  “There’s something wrong with that Snow White picture. I don’t see any Prince Charming around. All I see is a man who thinks he’s a lone wolf but acts like a stranded puppy.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Maybe so. But I don’t think you can take care of your two murdering friends.”

  “Your scheme involved watching for people following me, didn’t it? Where were you when the gray sedan came into sight?”

  “I was busy thinking up reasons why you need help. I can’t do a million things at once. Bill, you do need help.”

  “Sorry. Your scheme is out.”

  “You’re not going to get rid of me just by saying that.”

  “I’m going to do more than say it. I’m going to drive you to the hotel in Yosemite Valley and put you out of the car and leave. If I have to use force, okay.”

  “I dare you to try that! If you put me out of the car, or sneak away, I’m going to the police with the whole

  story.”

  He laughed. “That’s a big bluff. First you want to help me and then you threaten to turn me in to

  the cops.”

  “It’s not a bluff. And I wouldn’t be doing it to get you in trouble. I’d be doing it to get you out of trouble. Cappy and Domenic are nice and handy so the police can grab them. We can prove they trailed us from Reno. We can prove they tried to kill us in an accident. With that much to go on, maybe the police can prove Cappy and Domenic were in Cheyenne and Salt Lake City and did the other murders.”

  “Are you serious? Why would the cops give up an airtight case against me just because we asked them please to pin it on two other guys?”

  “You’d have a better chance if you were arrested than if you went after Cappy and Domenic alone. That would merely get you killed. So you’ll be smart to take my first offer and let me help.”

  She had a soft rounded chin but right now it looked as if it could plow stumps from the ground. Apparently she meant all this. “Everybody has a natural urge for self-preservation,” he said. “Let me appeal to yours. If
I okayed your scheme, that alibi I worked out for you would be wrecked. The whole thing depends on you ditching me as soon as you can. If you went on with me, it would look as though you were helping me get away with murder.”

  “Let me appeal to your sense of self-preservation. Besides the help I can give you, I’m the only witness who can back up your story. If I used that alibi you invented, and if you were arrested, I’d be a witness against you.”

  “You couldn’t clear me in a trial. A smart prosecutor would tear you to bits.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “He couldn’t make me admit anything but that you’re stupid, pig-headed, stubborn, shortsighted and rude. As far as I know there are no laws against those things. Not that there shouldn’t be.”

  Obviously he couldn’t talk her out of this. But he couldn’t let her go with him or call in the police. If she tagged along with him she’d be in constant danger. If she called in the cops, they’d accuse her of being an accessory after the fact of three murders. Either way she’d be in a bad jam. The idea was to fix things so she wouldn’t be in a jam at all. He had to trick her into walking out on him and never wanting to see him again. He thought he saw how it could be done. His plan would take a while to work and it would make him look like a heel, but that didn’t matter. He let out a carefully toned laugh, with just the right amount of amusement and admiration in it, and said, “You’re quite a girl.” He put an arm around her and pulled her close.

  She held herself so rigidly that she felt about as cuddly as a sack of rocks. “What’s all this for?” she asked.

  “Why don’t you relax? Hasn’t a man ever put his arm around you before?”

  “Certainly. Where do you think I was brought up, in a tomb?”

  “That may be it. You act slightly dead.”

  “The only other time you ever grabbed me was this morning. You were trying to teach me a lesson.”

  “Maybe I learned one myself.”

  “Bill, it isn’t safe to do any one-arm driving on this road.”